She turned her white face toward his, and through the dimness of sight from his straining efforts, he saw her try to smile, as she obeyed him to the letter, and without a sound.  “O, brave girl!” he thought, and threw the ground behind him desperately.

At twenty feet distance he dove like a base-runner, and his hands closed around the dog’s neck.  Over they went with the shock of the onset, and before they were still, the hands had finished their work.  A clutch, and a snap, and it was done.

The dog lay quivering.  Red rose to his knees wondering at the humming in his head.  His wits came back to him sharply.

“Did he bite you, Mattie?” he cried.  But she had already caught his hands and was looking at them, with a savage eagerness one would not have believed to be in her.

“There is no mark,” she said, suddenly weak, “he didn’t touch you?”

“Answer me when I speak to you!” shouted Red, beside himself.  “Did he bite you?”

She answered him with a sob “No.”  And then his question asked itself, and answered itself, although, again, he did not know it.  He gathered her up in his arms, kissed her like one raised from the dead, and swore and prayed and thanked God all in the same breath.

His old imperious nature came back with the relief.  “Here!” said he, putting her away for a moment.  “Take off that dress—­that slime on there’s enough to kill a hundred men—­take it right off.”

Miss Mattie started blindly to obey, then stopped.  “Not here, Will—­I’ll go in the house,” she said.

“You’ll take it off right here and now,” said Red, “and I’ll burn it up on the spot.  I’d ruther have forty rattlesnakes around than that stuff—­off with it.  This is no child’s play, and I don’t care a damn what the old lady next door thinks.”

Miss Mattie slipped off her outer skirt, and stood a second, confused and dainty.  She took flight to the house, running as lithely as a greyhound.

“By Jingo!” said Red in admiration.

“Let’s see you bring another woman that can run like that!”

He gathered some hay and piled it on the dress, firing the heap.

Then he turned to his antagonist.  “Poor old boy!  Hard luck, eh?  But I had to do it,” he said, and gave him decent interment at the end of the garden; washed his hands carefully and went into the house on pleasanter duties.

“I’ll ask her now, by the great horn spoon!” said he, valiantly.

Miss Mattie was in a curious state of mind.  There was an after effect from the fright, which made her tremble, and a remembrance of Cousin Will’s actions which made her tremble more yet.  When she heard him coming she started to fly, although now clothed beyond reproach, but her knees deserted her, and she was forced to sink back in her chair.  Red came in whistling blithely—­vainglorious man!

He had his suspicions, generated by the peculiar fervour Miss Mattie had shown in regard to his hands.