“Haven’t you got another match?” suggested Lanty.

“No—­it was my last!” he said impatiently.

“Just you hol’ on here,” she said suddenly, “and I’ll run down to the kitchen and fetch you a light.  I won’t be long.”

“No! no!” said the man quickly; “don’t!  I couldn’t wait.  I’ve been here too long now.  Look here.  You come in daylight and find it, and—­just keep it for me, will you?” He laughed.  “I’ll come for it.  And now, if you’ll only help to set me on that road again, for it’s so infernal black I can’t see the mare’s ears ahead of me, I won’t bother you any more.  Thank you.”

Lanty had quietly moved to his horse’s head and taken the bridle in her hand, and at once seemed to be lost in the gloom.  But in a few moments he felt the muffled thud of his horse’s hoof on the thick dust of the highway, and its still hot, impalpable powder rising to his nostrils.

“Thank you,” he said again, “I’m all right now,” and in the pause that followed it seemed to Lanty that he had extended a parting hand to her in the darkness.  She put up her own to meet it, but missed his, which had blundered onto her shoulder.  Before she could grasp it, she felt him stooping over her, the light brush of his soft mustache on her cheek, and then the starting forward of his horse.  But the retaliating box on the ear she had promptly aimed at him spent itself in the black space which seemed suddenly to have swallowed up the man, and even his light laugh.

For an instant she stood still, and then, swinging the basket indignantly from her shoulder, took up her suspended task.  It was no light one in the increasing wind, and the unfastened clothes-line had precipitated a part of its burden to the ground through the loosening of the rope.  But on picking up the trailing garments her hand struck an unfamiliar object.  The stranger’s lost knife!  She thrust it hastily into the bottom of the basket and completed her work.  As she began to descend with her burden she saw that the light of the kitchen fire, seen through the windows, was augmented by a candle.  Her mother was evidently awaiting her.

“Pretty time to be fetchin’ in the wash,” said Mrs. Foster querulously.  “But what can you expect when folks stand gossipin’ and philanderin’ on the ridge instead o’ tendin’ to their work?”

Now Lanty knew that she had not been “gossipin’” nor “philanderin’,” yet as the parting salute might have been open to that imputation, and as she surmised that her mother might have overheard their voices, she briefly said, to prevent further questioning, that she had shown a stranger the road.  But for her mother’s unjust accusation she would have been more communicative.  As Mrs. Foster went back grumblingly into the sitting-room Lanty resolved to keep the knife at present a secret from her mother, and to that purpose removed it from the basket.  But in the light of the candle she saw it for the first time plainly—­and started.