The rising sun lighted the town of Halton below them, and sent level rays across a wide expanse of farmland beyond it, flat meadows and rolling upland.  White mist shrouded the winding trail of a creek.  It was the kind of landscape he had viewed yesterday with a rising distaste; land that had tricked people from their right to wander; to go places on a train when they would.

He brought his eyes back from the treacherous vista and turned them down to the face of the sleeping girl.  A pale scarf was wound about her head, and he could see but little beyond it but the tip of her nose, a few scattered, minute freckles on one cheek.  She was limp, one bare hand falling inertly over the edge of the seat between them.  He looked out again at the checkerboard of farms.  He, too, had been tricked.

“But what a fine trick!” he said aloud.  “No wonder it works!”

He dozed himself presently, nodding till his forward-pitching head would waken him.  Afterward he heard Spike saying:  “So dark you can’t see your hand before your face.”  He came awake.  His head was on Patricia’s shoulder, her arm supporting him.

“You must have gone to sleep and let the car stop,” she told him.  He stared sleepily, believing it.  “But I want my breakfast,” she reminded him.  He sat up, winking the sleep from his eyes, shaking it from his head.

“Of course,” he said.

He looked again out over the land to which an old device had inveigled him.  A breeze had come with the dawn, stirring the grain fields into long ripples.  At the roadside was the tossing silver of birch leaves.

“This is one whale of a day for us two, isn’t it?” he demanded.

“You said it!” she told him.

“Breakfast and a license and—­”

“You know it!” she declared.

“Still afraid?”

“More than ever!  It’s a wonder and a wild desire, but it scares me stiff—­you’re so strange.”

“You know, it isn’t too late.”

She began to thump him with a clenched fist up between his shoulders.

“Carry on!” she ordered.  “There isn’t a slacker in the whole car!”

* * * * *

A few hours later, in the dining room of the Whipple New Place, Gideon, Harvey D., and Merle Whipple were breakfasting.  To them entered Sharon Whipple from his earlier breakfast, ruddy, fresh-shaven, bubbling.

“On my way to the Home Farm,” he explained, “but I had to drop in for a look at the girl by daylight.  She seemed too peaked last night.”

“Pat’s still sleeping,” said her father over his egg cup.

“That’s good!  I guess a rest was all she needed.  Beats all, girls nowadays seem to be made of wire rope.  You take that one—­”

A telephone bell rang in the hall beyond, and Merle Whipple went to it.

“Hello, hello!  Whipple New Place—­Merle Whipple speaking.”  He listened, standing in the doorway to turn a puzzled face to the group about the table.  “Hello!  Who—­who?” His bewilderment was apparent.  “But it’s Pat talking,” he said, “over long distance.”