“Were you alone on that pier?” asked Caroline with the utmost naïveté, as she snuggled down deeper into the collar of the sweater.

“I’m generally alone—­in most ways,” answered Andrew, the suspicion of a laugh covering the sadness in his tone.  “I seem to see myself going through life alone unless something happens—­quick!” The bitter note sounded plainly this time and cut with an ache into her consciousness.

“I’ve been a little lonely, too—­always, until just lately and now I don’t feel that way at all;” she looked at him thoughtfully with moonlit eyes that were deep like sapphires.  “I wonder why?”

Andrew Sevier’s heart stopped dead still for a second and then began to pound in his breast as if entrapped.  For the moment his voice was utterly useless and he prayed helplessly for a meed of self-control that might aid him to gain a sane footing.

Then just at that moment the old genie of the forests, who gloats through the seasons over myriads of wooings that are carried on in the fastnesses of his green woods, sounded a long, low, guttural groan that rose to a blood-curdling shriek, from the branches just above the head of the moon-mad man and girl.  For an instrument he used the throat of an enraged old hoot-owl, perturbed by the intrusion of the noise of the distant hunt and the low-voiced conversation on his wonted privacy.

And the experienced ancient succeeded in precipitating the crisis of the situation with magical promptness, for Caroline sprang to her feet, turned with a shudder and buried her head in Andrew’s hunting coat somewhere near the left string for cartridge loops.  She clung to him in abject terror.

“Sweetheart!” he exclaimed, giving her a little shake, “it’s only a cross old owl—­don’t be frightened,” and he raised her cheek against his own and drew her nearer.  But Caroline trembled and clung and seemed unable to face the situation.  Andrew essayed further reassurance by turning his head until his lips pressed a tentative kiss against the curve of her chin.

“He can’t get you,” he entreated and managed a still closer embrace.

“Is he still there?” came in a muffled voice from against his neck where Caroline had again buried her head at a slight crackling from the dark branches overhead.

“I think he is, bless him!” answered Andrew, and this time the kiss managed a landing on the warm lips under the eyes raised to his.

And then ensued several breathless moments while the world reeled around and the vital elemental force that is sometimes cruel, sometimes kind, turned the wheel of their universe.

“I’m not frightened any more,” Caroline at last managed to say as she prepared to withdraw, not too decisively, from her strong-armed refuge.

“He’s still there,” warned Andrew Sevier with a happy laugh, and Caroline yielded again for a second, then drew his arms aside.

“Thank you—­I’m not afraid any more—­of anything,” she said, laughing into his eyes, “and I really think we had better try to get back to camp and supper, for I don’t hear the dogs any longer.  We don’t want to be lost like the ‘babes in the woods’ and left to die out here, do we?”