Your only safe course is to take it now."

Ted burst into the affair with a derisive shout. "Oh, Rob! What a silly
to care about that little bit of a picture! Let him have it. It was only
the horses he wanted anyway!"

The two pairs of eyes met. His were full of deference, yet compelling.
Hers brimmed with restrained laughter. With a gesture she waved back the
roll and walked away toward the fire.

"Thank you," said he behind her. "I'll try to prove myself worthy of the
trust."

"Rufus! Dare you to run down the hill to that big tree with me!" Ted, no
longer interested in this tame conclusion of what had promised to be an
exciting encounter, challenged his sister. Ruth accepted, and the pair
were off down a long, inviting slope none too smooth, with a stiff
stubble, but not the less attractive for that.

Richard and Roberta were left standing at the top of the hill near the
place where the fire was smouldering into dulness. Before them stretched
the valley, brown and yellow and dark green in the November sunlight,
with a gray-blue river winding its still length along. In the far
distance a blue-and-purple haze enveloped the hills; above all stretched
a sky upon whose fairness wisps of clouds were beginning to show here
and there, while in the south the outlines of a rising bank of gray gave
warning that those who gazed might look their fill to-day--to-morrow
there would be neither sunlight nor purple haze. The two looked in
silence for a minute, not at the boy and girl shouting below, but at the
beauty in the peaceful landscape.