little round leaves of loose birch-bush. Great boles and tree-tops closed the earth into shadows, and a sound woke that sent the blood to Randal’s throat. For it was the snickering gasp of a winded horse, and a laugh that might be a child’s.
Randal sat down to ride; with cunning that swung him unhurt between the trees and the snatching vines; with speed because ahead the bush was cleft by a gully that would audit Art Scannell’s accounts for Eternity; and with a brain that said:
“You brute! Oh, you brute! Why don’t you let him go! You’ve no right to hold her by that or by anything else.”
Scrub crashed at his shoulder, and Lou’s light figure rode as his shadow beside him. Randal was blind for an instant. Then he said:
“I want him—myself.”
“Of course,” said Lou, gaily; “so do I.”
Then the laugh ahead filled the night, and words broke before it.
Tripping scrub and vines barred the way; lawyer ripped flesh from faces and necks; creeping lichens were moist on the branches that hit them, and the thick wild smell of bush clogged their breathing. The lust of capture was heavy on horses and men, and Randal’s sweating hands slipped on the reins as he lifted his mare forward by the spurs. The bush
