all families, and being a woman she was not in the direct line.  Instead, therefore, of spurring forward to join them, he lingered a little until they passed out of sight, and until he was joined by a companion from behind.  Him, too, he purposely delayed.  They were walking slowly, breathing their mustangs, when his companion suddenly uttered a cry of alarm, and sprang from his horse.  For on the trail before them lay the young lawyer quite unconscious, with his riderless steed nipping the young leaves of the underbrush.  He was evidently stunned by a fall, although across his face was a livid welt which might have been caused by collision with the small elastic limb of a sapling, or a blow from a riding-whip; happily the last idea was only in Peter’s mind.  As they lifted him up he came slowly to consciousness.  He was bewildered and dazed at first, but as he began to speak the color came back freshly to his face.  He could not conceive, he stammered, what had happened.  He was riding with Miss Atherly, and he supposed his horse had slipped upon some withered pine needles and thrown him!  A spasm of pain crossed his face suddenly, and he lifted his hand to the top of his head.  Was he hurt there?  No, but perhaps his hair, which was flowing and curly, had caught in the branches—­like Absalom’s!  He tried to smile, and even begged them to assist him to his horse that he might follow his fair companion, who would be wondering where he was; but Peter, satisfied that he had received no serious injury, hurriedly enjoined him to stay, while he himself would follow his sister.  Putting spurs to his horse, he succeeded, in spite of the slippery trail, in overtaking her near the summit.  At the sound of his horse’s hoofs she wheeled quickly, came dashing furiously towards him, and only pulled up at the sound of his voice.  But she had not time to change her first attitude and expression, which was something which perplexed and alarmed him.  Her long lithe figure was half crouching, half clinging to the horse’s back, her loosened hair flying over her shoulders, her dark eyes gleaming with an odd nymph-like mischief.  Her white teeth flashed as she recognized him, but her laugh was still mocking and uncanny.  He took refuge in indignation.

“What has happened?” he said sharply.

“The fool tried to kiss me!” she said simply.  “And I—­I—­let out at him—­like mother!”

Nevertheless, she gave him one of those shy, timid glances he had noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers, with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent with her previous masculine independence.

“You might have killed him,” said Peter angrily.

“Perhaps I might!  Ought I have killed him, Peter?” she said anxiously, yet with the same winning, timid smile.  If she had not been his sister, he would have thought her quite handsome.

“As it is,” he said impetuously, “you have made a frightful scandal here.”