An hour later there was the sound of hurrying hoofs and jingling accoutrements, and out of the plain swept a squad of cavalrymen bearing down upon the deserted vehicle.  For a few moments they, too, seemed to surround and possess it, even as the other shadows had done, penetrating the woods and thicket beside it.  And then as suddenly at some signal they swept forward furiously in the track of the destroying shadows.

Miss Cantire took full advantage of the suggestion “not to hurry” in her walk, with certain feminine ideas of its latitude.  She gathered a few wild flowers and some berries in the underwood, inspected some birds’ nests with a healthy youthful curiosity, and even took the opportunity of arranging some moist tendrils of her silky hair with something she took from the small reticule that hung coquettishly from her girdle.  It was, indeed, some twenty minutes before she emerged into the road again; the vehicle had evidently disappeared in a turn of the long, winding ascent, but just ahead of her was that dreadful man, the “Chicago drummer.”  She was not vain, but she made no doubt that he was waiting there for her.  There was no avoiding him, but his companionship could be made a brief one.  She began to walk with ostentatious swiftness.

Boyle, whose concern for her safety was secretly relieved at this, began to walk forward briskly too without looking around.  Miss Cantire was not prepared for this; it looked so ridiculously as if she were chasing him!  She hesitated slightly, but now as she was nearly abreast of him she was obliged to keep on.

“I think you do well to hurry, Miss Cantire,” he said as she passed.  “I’ve lost sight of the coach for some time, and I dare say they’re already waiting for us at the summit.”

Miss Cantire did not like this any better.  To go on beside this dreadful man, scrambling breathlessly after the stage—­for all the world like an absorbed and sentimentally belated pair of picnickers—­was really too much.  “Perhaps if you ran on and told them I was coming as fast as I could,” she suggested tentatively.

“It would be as much as my life is worth to appear before Foster without you,” he said laughingly.  “You’ve only got to hurry on a little faster.”

But the young lady resented this being driven by a “drummer.”  She began to lag, depressing her pretty brows ominously.

“Let me carry your flowers,” said Boyle.  He had noticed that she was finding some difficulty in holding up her skirt and the nosegay at the same time.

“No!  No!” she said in hurried horror at this new suggestion of their companionship.  “Thank you very much—­but they’re really not worth keeping—­I am going to throw them away.  There!” she added, tossing them impatiently in the dust.