Again she felt his arm harden threateningly under her
startled clasp as a red-headed and very drunk river-man lurched out of
a doorway ahead of them; with breath softly audible between arched lips
she tried to recall the gentleness of his hands when he was refastening
her cloak beneath her rigidly upflung chin. And when the higher
morning sun found her far beyond the rolling pasture land, miles in the
heavy timber, she had dismounted, there where the highest loop in the
road commanded its breath-taking sweep of country, and was sitting
cross-legged upon the trunk of a fallen tree at the road edge.
Frowning a little over the vexing uncertainty of details, Barbara was
wondering just what their next meeting would be like; she had just
finished picturing his man's discomfort and self-consciousness and lack
of ease and, with a soberness so childish it would have dumbfounded her
had she given it thought, was nodding approvingly over a contemplation
of her own kind cordiality, when that very blue-shirted figure itself
rounded a near corner in the narrow lane between the trees. Stephen
O'Mara, in the flesh, appeared before her, astride Ragtime and leading
her roan, which, contentedly cropping the bush tops, had disappeared a
full quarter of an hour before.
The girl gasped at the suddenness of his coming; she half started to
rise before she remembered the instability of her perch, and then
crouched even lower than before when she saw that he was not yet aware
of her nearness.
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