In Secret

They walked on, McKay grinning. The picnickers were getting up from the crushed heather; Macniff with his banjo came toward them on his incredibly thick legs, blocking their path.

"Say, sport," he began, "won't you and the lady join us?" But McKay cut him short: "Do you know you are impudent?" he said very quietly. "Step out of the way there."

"The hell you say!" and McKay's patience ended at the same instant. And something happened very quickly, for the man only staggered under the smashing blow and the other man's arm flew up and his pistol blazed in the gathering dusk, shattering the cairngorm on McKay's shoulder. The young woman fired from where she sat on the grass and the soft hat was jerked from Miss Erith's head. At the same moment McKay clutched her arm and jerked her violently behind a jutting elbow of Isla Rock. When she recovered her balance she saw he held two pistols.

"Boche?" she gasped incredulously.

"Yes. Keep your head down. Crouch among the ferns behind me!"

There was a ruddy streak of fire from the pistol in his right hand; shots answered, the bullets smacking the rock or whining above it.

"Yellow-hair?"

"Yes, Kay."

"You are not scared, are you?"

"Yes; but I'm all right."

He said with quiet bitterness: "It's too late to say what a fool I am. Their camouflage took me in; that's all--"

He fired again; a rattling volley came storming among the rocks.

"We're all right here," he said tersely. But in his heart he was terrified, for he had only the cartridges in his clips.

Presently he motioned her to bend over very low. Then, taking her hand, he guided her along an ascending gulley, knee-deep in fern and brake and brier, to a sort of little rocky pulpit.

The lake lay behind them, lapping the pulpit's base. There was a man in a boat out there. McKay fired at him and he plied both oars and fled out of range.

"Lie down," he whispered to Miss Erith. The girl mutely obeyed.

Now, crouched up there in the deepening dusk, his pistol extended, resting on the rock in front of him, his keen eyes searched restlessly; his ears were strained for the minutest stirring on the moor in front of him; and his embittered mind was at work alternately cursing his own stupidity and searching for some chance for this young girl whom his own incredible carelessness had probably done to death.

Presently, between him and Isla Water, a shadow moved. He fired; and around them the darkness spat flame from a dozen different angles.