“I’m not going to round up the outfit, if there is one.  I haven’t lost my mind.  I’ll see what is going on, or about to go on.  Then I’ll come back.”

“Here?”

Cameron considered.

“Better meet at the machine,” he decided, after a glance at the sky.  “In half an hour you won’t be able to see your hand in front of you.  Wait here for a half-hour or so, and then start back, and for heaven’s sake don’t shoot at anything you see moving.  As a matter of fact, I might as well have your revolver.  I won’t need it, but it may avoid any accidental shooting by a youth I both love and admire!”

“If I hear any shooting, I’ll come in,” Pink said, still sulky.

“Come in and welcome,” said Willy Cameron, and Pink knew he was smiling.

He took the revolver and slipped away into the darkness, leaving Pink both melancholy and disturbed.  Unaccustomed to night in the woods, he found his nerves twitching at every sound.  In the war there had been a definite enemy, definitely placed.  Even when he had gone into that vile strip between the trenches, there had been a general direction for the inimical.  Here—­

He moved carefully, and stood with his back against a tree.

Not a sound came from the farm buildings.  Willy Cameron’s progress, too, was noiseless.  With no way to tell the lapse of time, and gauging it by his war experience, when an hour had apparently passed by, he knew that Cameron had been gone about ten minutes.

Time dragged on.  A cow, unmilked, lowed plaintively once or twice.  A September night breeze set the dying leaves on the trees to rustling, and stirred the dried ones about his feet.  Pink’s mind, gradually reassured, turned to other things.  He thought of Lily Cardew, for one.  Like Willy Cameron, he knew he would always love her, but unlike Willy, the first pain of her loss was gone.  He was glad that time was over.  He was glad that she was at home again, safe from those—­ Some one was moving near him, passing within twenty feet.  Whoever it was was stepping cautiously but blunderingly.  It was not Cameron, then.  He was a footfall only, not even an outline.  Before Pink could decide on a line of action, the sound was lost.

Every sense acute, he waited.  He had decided that if the incident were repeated, he would make an effort to get the fellow from behind, but there was no return.  The wind had died again, and there was no longer even the rustling of the leaves to break the utter stillness.

Suddenly he saw a red flash near the barn, and an instant later heard the report of a pistol.  Came immediately after that a brief fusillade of shots, a pause, then two or three scattering ones.

With the first shot Pink started running.  He was vaguely conscious of other steps near him, running also, but he could see nothing.  His whole mind was set on finding Willy Cameron.  Alone he had not a chance, but two of them together could put up a fight.  He pelted along, stumbling, recovering, stumbling again.