Humphrey was in a corner. Mrs. Brown had seen him kiss the noisy hoyden, who was always attracting his attention when he was within hearing. He remembered the incident as a perfectly harmless one in itself. But how he was to make Bessie see it so was a difficult thing to undertake, coupled with Annie's evidently deliberate misrepresentation of his very free compliments to her florid good looks.
So he made a fatal pause, and then said helplessly: "How can I make you understand? There was really nothing at all in that."
"Well, you can tell Annie Drew that there is really nothing at all in this, either,—and tell her the truth. Goodnight."
And she was gone into the house so quickly that he had no further time for any appeal.
V.
He found his way to Billy through the early darkness, and started home without a farewell word to the others, so furious that he galloped through the murky night at apace that soon covered his horse with foam, and made his own head throb with the exercise, and the heavy heat that grew more oppressive in the timber. It was absolutely dark there, to human eyes. No ray from a star, no reflection from a cloud, only the thick blackness, and the pungent scent of smoke.
Billy shied violently soon after they reached the sawdust road, and Humphrey thought of a panther as he heard the crisp dry rustle of the leaves behind. Billy grew almost unmanageable, snorting, looking back, and plunging. His rider turned him for a moment and fired his revolver into the darkness. By its flash he saw a dark shape in the yellow road, which sprang aside with a thud of soft feet, as he caught a gleam of shining eyes. Then he knew it was a panther, driven in by the fire from the mountains, and his interest in getting home equaled Billy's, neither knowing but that those stealthy feet would bury their sharp claws in their backs before they could get out of the woods. But nothing further was heard of the great cat in the short time they were scampering home.
After the horse had been cared for, Humphrey walked home, and the storm of his mingled emotions came up within him again. The strength of his love for Bessie was a surprise to him, just as his occasional fits of anger were; but this emotion had stirred up depths that his anger had never reached. He felt that it had been with him from the beginning, and only just now a door had been opened, and he had been shown himself.
With the trivial thing that had come between them he was filled with anger and a sense of impotence. He believed he could have explained it if Bessie had not been so angry. He would prove it was not true, if he had to make Annie write and say so. That however would be the last resource, for he had been a fool, and said many things to her that he felt slightly ashamed of when he tried to remember them.
When he turned on the door-step and looked again into the night, a sudden stab of fear went through him, as he saw the dull glow low in the northern sky. What if the fire should unexpectedly reach them out there in the narrow clearing? Surrounded as they were by fallen timber, they would surely be suffocated. He felt that he must go back with an urgent warning, but being assured by people who lived far up the coast where they could note its progress that the fire was confined to the mountains and yet at a safe distance, he was less anxious, though he rose and watched that angry light several times before morning.
Then Humphrey did a thing which
