Perhaps she would have dared and gone; perhaps she would have swallowed pride and her negative, and made one more appeal. She turned hesitantly and saw the devil.

It was a small devil on stilts, not more than three or four inches tall, but there was no mistaking his identity. No other living thing could possess such demoniac little red-hot pin points of eyes, or be so bristly and grisly and vicious. The stilts suddenly folded flat, and the devil rushed upon his prey. The girl stepped back; her foot turned and caught, and—

"Of course," the patient voice below was saying, "if you really think that you couldn't find the road, I could draw you a map and send it up by the hair route. But I really think—"

"BLUMP!"

The rock had turned over on his unprotected head and flattened him out forever. Such was his first thought. When he finally collected himself, his eyeglasses, and his senses, he sustained a second shock more violent than the first.

Two paces away, the Voice, duly and most appropriately embodied, sat half-facing him. The Voice's eyes confirmed his worst suspicions, and, dazed though they were at the moment, there were deep lights in them that wholly disordered his mental mechanism. Nor were her first words such as to restore his deranged faculties.

"Oh-h! Aren't you GOGGLESOME!" she cried dizzily.

He raised his hands to the huge brown spectacles.

"Wh—wh—what did you come down for?" he babbled. There was a distinct note of accusation in the query.

"COME down! I fell!"

"Yes, yes; that may be true—"

"MAY be!"

"Of course, it is true. I—I—I see it's true. I'm awfully sorry."

"Sorry? What for?"

"That you came. That you fell, I mean to say. I—I—I don't really know what I mean to say."

"No wonder, poor boy! I landed right on you, didn't I?"

"Did you? Something did. I thought it was the mountain."

"You aren't very complimentary," she pouted. "But there! I dare say I knocked your thoughts all to bits."

"No; not at all. Certainly, I mean. It doesn't matter. See here," he said, with an injured sharpness of inquiry born of his own exasperation at his verbal fumbling, "you said you wouldn't, and here you are. I ask you, is that fair and honorable?"

"Well, if it comes to that," she countered, "you promised that you'd never speak to me if you saw me, and here you are telling me that you don't want me around the place at all. It's very rude and inhospitable, I consider."

"I can't help it," he said miserably. "I'm afraid."

"You don't look it. You look disagreeable."

"As long as you stayed where you belonged—Excuse me—I don't mean to be impolite—but I—I—You see—as long as you were just a voice, I could manage all right, but now that you are—er—er—you—" His speech trailed off lamentably into meaningless stutterings.

The girl turned amazed and amused eyes upon him.

"What on earth ails the poor man?" she inquired of all creation.

"I told you. I—I'm shy."

"Not really! I thought it was a joke."

"Qu'est-ce qu'il dit? Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?" demanded the yellow-breasted inquisitor, from his flowery perch.

"What does he say? He says he's shy. Poor poo—er young, helpless thing!" And her laughter put to shame a palm thrush who was giving what he had up to that moment considered a highly creditable musical performance.

"All right!" he retorted warmly. "Laugh if you want to! But after stipulating that we should be strangers, to—to act this way—well, I think it's—it's—forward. That's what I think it is."

"Do you, indeed? Perhaps you think it's pleasant for me, after I've opened my heart to a stranger, to have him forced on me as an acquaintance!"

From the depths of those limpid eyes welled up a little film of vexation.

"O Lord! Don't do that!" he implored. "I didn't mean—I'm a bear—a pig—a—a—a scarab—I'm anything you choose. Only don't do that!"

"I'm not doing anything."

"Of course you're not. That's fine! As for your secrets, I dare say I wouldn't know you again if I saw you."

"Oh, wouldn't you?" she cried in quite another tone.

"Quite likely not. These glasses, you see. They make things look quite queer."

"Or if you heard me?" she challenged.

"Ah, well, that's different. But I forget quite easily—even things like voices."

She leaned forward, her hands in her lap, her eyes upon the goggled face before her.

"Then take them off."

"What? My glasses?"

"Take them off!"

"Wh—wh—why should I?"

"So that you can see me better."

"I don't want to see you better."

"Yes, you do. I'm much more interesting than a scarab."

"But I know about scarabs and I don't know about—about—"

"Girls. So one might suspect. Do you know what I'm doing, Mr. Beetle Man?"

"N-n-no."

"I'm flirting with you. I never flirted with a scientific person before. It's awfully one-sided, difficult, uphill work."

This last was all but drowned out in his flood of panicky instructions, from which she disentangled such phrases as "first to left"—"dry river-bed-hundred-yards"—"dead tree—can't miss it."

"If you send me away now, I'll cry. Really, truly cry, this time."

"No, you won't! I mean I won't! I—I'll do anything! I'll talk! I'll make conversation! How old are you? That's what the Chinese ask. I used to have a Chinese cook, but he lost all my shirt studs, playing fan-tan. Can you play fan-tan? Two can't play, though. They have funny cards in this country, like the Spanish. Have you seen a bullfight yet? Don't do it. It's dull and brutal. The bull has no more chance than—than—"

"Than an unprotected man with a conscienceless flirt, who falls on his neck and then threatens to submerge him in tears."

"Now you're beginning again!" he wailed. "What did you jump for, anyway?"

"I slipped. An awful, red-eyed, scrambly fiend scared me—a real, live, hairy devilkin on stilts. He ran at me across the rock. Was that one of your pet scarabs, Mr. Beetle Man?"

"That was a tarantula, I suppose, from the description."

"They're deadly, aren't they?"

"Of course not. Unscientific nonsense. I'll go up and chase him off."

"Flying from perils that you know not of to more familiar dangers?" she taunted.

"Well, you see, with the tarantula out of the way, there's no reason why you shouldn't—er—"

"Go, and leave you in peace? What do you think of that for gallantry, Birdie?"

The gay-feathered inquisitor had come quite near.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?" he queried, cocking his curious head.

"He says he doesn't like me one little, wee, teeny bit, and he wishes I'd go home and stay there. And so I'm going, with my poor little feelings all hurted and ruffled up like anything."

"Nothing of the sort," protested the badgered spectacle-wearer.

"Then why such unseemly haste to make my path clear?"

"I just thought that maybe you'd go back on the top of the rock, where you came from, and—and be a voice again. If you won't go, I will."

He made three jumps of it up the boulder, bearing a stick in his hand. Presently his face, preternaturally solemn and gnomish behind the goggles, protruded over the rim. The girl was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, contemplating the scenery as if she'd never had another interest in her life. Apparently she had forgotten his very existence.

"Ahem!" he began nervously.

"Ahem!" she retorted so promptly that he almost fell off his precarious perch. "Did you ring? Number, please."

"I wish I knew whether you were laughing at me or not," he said ruefully.

"When?"

"All the time."

"I am. Your darkest suspicions are correct. Did you abolish my devilkin?"

"I drove him back into his trapdoor home and put a rock over it."

"Why didn't you destroy him?"

"Because I've appointed him guardian of the rock, with