Although the remark was consistent with Boyle’s objectionable reputation as a humorist, Miss Cantire deigned to receive it with a smile, at which Boyle, who was a little relieved by their security so far, and their nearness to their journey’s end, developed further ingenious trifling until, at the end of an hour, they stood upon the plain again.

There was no sign of the coach, but its fresh track was visible leading along the bank of the ravine towards the intersection of the road they should have come by, and to which the coach had indubitably returned.  Mr. Boyle drew a long breath.  They were comparatively safe from any invisible attack now.  At the end of ten minutes Miss Cantire, from her superior height, detected the top of the missing vehicle appearing above the stunted bushes at the junction of the highway.

“Would you mind throwing those old flowers away now?” she said, glancing at the spoils which Boyle still carried.

“Why?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re too ridiculous.  Please do.”

“May I keep one?” he asked, with the first intonation of masculine weakness in his voice.

“If you like,” she said, a little coldly.

Boyle selected a small spray of myrtle and cast the other flowers obediently aside.

“Dear me, how ridiculous!” she said.

“What is ridiculous?” he asked, lifting his eyes to hers with a slight color.  But he saw that she was straining her eyes in the distance.

“Why, there don’t seem to be any horses to the coach!”

He looked.  Through a gap in the furze he could see the vehicle now quite distinctly, standing empty, horseless and alone.  He glanced hurriedly around them; on the one side a few rocks protected them from the tangled rim of the ridge; on the other stretched the plain.  “Sit down, don’t move until I return,” he said quickly.  “Take that.”  He handed back her pistol, and ran quickly to the coach.  It was no illusion; there it stood vacant, abandoned, its dropped pole and cut traces showing too plainly the fearful haste of its desertion!  A light step behind him made him turn.  It was Miss Cantire, pink and breathless, carrying the cocked derringer in her hand.  “How foolish of you—­without a weapon,” she gasped in explanation.

Then they both stared at the coach, the empty plain, and at each other!  After their tedious ascent, their long detour, their protracted expectancy and their eager curiosity, there was such a suggestion of hideous mockery in this vacant, useless vehicle—­apparently left to them in what seemed their utter abandonment—­that it instinctively affected them alike.  And as I am writing of human nature I am compelled to say that they both burst into a fit of laughter that for the moment stopped all other expression!

“It was so kind of them to leave the coach,” said Miss Cantire faintly, as she took her handkerchief from her wet and mirthful eyes.  “But what made them run away?”