an intoxicated lady who has resisted the well-meant advice of a policeman, I put Mrs. MacGill together and shook Sir Archibald's hand. I am sure I don't know why; he did precious little for me, but he had been something of a hero, nevertheless.

'Shin up that bank and look alive!' I was never spoken to in that way before, in all my life. I wish Breck Calhoun could have heard him!

MRS. MACGILL

Saturday afternoon

I have had a terrible experience, which has upset me completely and damaged my right knee, besides agitating me so much that I can scarcely remember how it happened. I have read that a drowning man sees his whole life before him in a flash of time. It is different with women perhaps. I saw no flash of anything, and thought only of myself,—remembering a horrible story I read somewhere about a horse in the Crimea that bit the faces of the enemy. Sir Archibald flung me against a gate. The intention was kind, I dare say, but even then I could just hear the beads ripping off my mantle as I fell against the bars. The lane seemed full of ponies, all screaming, as I didn't know horses could scream, and kicking like so many grasshoppers.

'It's all right! Nothing has happened!' he called to the girl, when the herd receded.

'I don't know what you two call happened,' I said, as soon as I could speak. 'We have been nearly killed—all of us, especially me.'

I looked at Miss Pomeroy; so did Sir Archibald. She is an active girl, and at the first suggestion of danger she had scrambled headlong up a steep bank, where she clung to the roots of the hedge, entirely forgetting all about me. She now came down, and required some assistance in descending, although she had climbed up, which is more difficult, all in a moment. She was certainly pale—really pale for the first time since she came here, and did not seem to think about her hat, which was hanging half-way down her back by this time. Poor Mr. MacGill used always to say that when a pretty girl forgot her appearance there was something really serious in the air. She seemed to have forgotten, but I dare say she really was thinking that she looked nicer that way. She came up to the young man, and held out her hand to him, saying, 'Thank you, Sir Archibald.' Americans are very forward, certainly. If I had said 'Thank you,' and offered to shake hands with him, there might have been some reason for it, although I never thought of doing so; it was decidedly Me that Sir Archibald had rescued. This did not seem to make a bit of difference to them, however. He took her hand and shook it, and then I must say had the civility to give Me his arm, and we all walked back to the hotel. I felt so shattered that I went to bed for the rest of the afternoon.

SIR ARCHIBALD MAXWELL MACKENZIE

Grey Tor Inn

Mrs. MacGill is not the kind of person you'd associate with danger,—being an armchair-and-feather-bed sort of character,—yet, by Jingo, the old girl has had a narrow squeak to-day. She and Miss Virginia went out for a walk together, the companion being invisible with the usual headache. I thought I would follow them a little way. Mrs. MacGill is an interfering old person, and I have noticed of late that she scents a flirtation between the fair American and me. Whether there is a flirtation or not, I don't know (I am not learned in such things); but if there were, she is not the person to stop it, nor any other old cat on earth. She has merely succeeded—I wish she knew—in putting it into my head that American girls are apt to be exceedingly attractive as well as eligible in the matrimonial market. I should think Miss Virginia was as eligible as any of them, and better looking than most.

I kept the pair in sight, and it was lucky that I did. A tremendous explosion from a quarry where some men are blasting made me stop short, and as to the old girl in front, she leaped about a foot into the air, and I could hear Miss Virginia laugh and say something funny about ankles and white stockings. Just then a most extraordinary noise began at the top of the lane, a pounding of hoofs and grinding of gravel and flying of stones; and in another minute, round the corner of this lane, which was of the narrowest sort and nearly roofed in with trees and banks, as these beastly Devonshire lanes always are, came a herd of moor ponies—about twenty or thirty of them—squeaking and biting and kicking, in a regular stampede. The report of the blasting had startled them, I don't doubt, and part terror, part vice, made them kick up a shindy and set off at full gallop. There wasn't a moment to lose. I ran for the women, with a shout, thinking only of the young one, of course. But when I saw the two together, there wasn't a question of which I must help. Miss Virginia had legs of her own; if Mrs. MacGill had any, they were past helping her now. There was a sort of hurdle to the right; I managed to jam the old woman against it and shout to the girl, 'Shin up that bank! Look alive!' while I stood in front, waving my arms and carrying on like a madman to frighten the ponies. They bore down on us in a swelter of dust; but just when they were within about a yard of our position they swerved to the left, stopped half a second, looking at us out of the corners of their eyes, snuffed the air, snorted, gave a squeal or two more, and galloped off down the lane. It was a pretty narrow shave,—nothing, of course, if the women hadn't been there. Miss Virginia and I shook hands over it, and between us we got the old lady back to the hotel, nearly melted with fright.