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Ann liked his voice when he said that.

“Well, thank you all the same for the riding lesson,” she said. “I’ll get back now.”

“You can’t walk.”

“Oh, yes, I can. The foot’s all right again. See! It scarcely hurts a scrap. It was only a little bit of a twist I gave it. Just painful at the time—that’s all.”

“You’re not walking,” he said; and quite coolly swung her up into the saddle as he had done before.

“I thought I wasn’t to ride again,” she said mischievously.

“You’re not going to ride,” he answered grimly, “not by yourself. You’re going to be led.”

Ann laughed, but she was quite content to sit astride Nigger while the handsome shepherd, holding the bridle reins over his arm, walked beside her.

Queer that she should feel so much at home with him! He wasn’t a gentleman; not in the sense in which she’d always used the word—not in the sense that Gerald Waring was, for instance. Yet of the two, which man had treated her with the greater courtesy? Certainly Rodney Marsh had spoken roughly and had called her a little fool, but she’d deserved it. She had no right to wander out alone over the hills, ignorant as she was of this sort of life, and of any dangers she might encounter. Women who landed themselves in difficulties and then had to shriek to some man to come and rescue them—risking the man’s life thereby—were idiots—perfectly pernicious idiots. Marsh had certainly pooh-poohed the idea of danger to himself; but, if nothing else, at least she’d been a nuisance to him. She was being a nuisance now—delaying him on his homeward way. Well, she’d try to be particularly nice to make up for it. She’d try never to “conde-