"Here, Andy, skin out of that sweater and get into that extra buckskin in

my electric," he said, and forthwith began without ceremony to assist

Andrew Sevier in peeling off a soft, white, high-collared sweater he

wore, and in less time than it took to think it he had slipped it over

Caroline's protesting head, pulled it down around her slim hips almost to

where her kilts met her boots and rolled the collar up under her eyes.

Then he immediately turned his attention to the arrival of the mongrel

sleuths, each accompanied by a white-toothed negro of renowned

coon-fighting, possum-catching proclivities, whom he had assembled from

the Old Harpeth to lead the hunt, thus leaving Caroline and Andrew alone

for the moment on the far side of the fire.

"Indeed, I'm not going to have your sweater!" she protested, beginning to

divest herself of the borrowed garment, but not knowing exactly how to

crawl out of its soft embrace.

"Please, oh, please do!" he exclaimed quickly, and as he spoke he caught

her hand away, that had begun to tug at the collar.

"I wouldn't keep it for the world--and have you cold, but--I can't get

out," she answered with a laugh. "Please show me or call for help."

And as she pleaded Andrew Sevier towered beside her, tall and slender,

while the cold breeze with its pine-laden breath ruffled his white

shirt-sleeves across his arms. Caroline Darrah in the embrace of his

clinging apparel was a sight that sent the blood through his veins at a

rate that warred with the winds, and his eyes drank deeply. The color

mounted under her eyes and with the unconsciousness of a child she

nestled her chin in the woolly folds about the neck as she turned her

face from the firelight.

"Well, then, get David's coat from the car," she pleaded.

"Will you stand back in the shadow of that tree until I do?" he asked.

He had caught across the fire a glimpse of the restive Hobson and a

sudden mad desire prompted him to snatch this one joy from Fate, come

what would--just a few hours with her under the winter stars, when life

seemed to offer so little in the count of the years.

"Why, yes, of course! Did you think I'd dare go out in the dark alone,

without you?" and her joyous ingenuous casting of herself upon his

protection was positively poignant. "Hurry, please, because I--don't want

anybody to find me before you come!" After which request it took him very

little time to run across the lot and vault the fence into the road where

the electric stood.

"It's so uncertain how things arrange themselves sometimes, some places,"

she remarked to herself as she caught sight of the movements of the

foiled Hobson, whose search had now become an open maneuver.




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