Her hands rested light as birds upon his shoulders; her eyes were steady in his, and very close.

"D'you love me?" she asked, her voice so calm, so pure, somehow so like a singing star.

He choked.

"A bit--sometimes."

"Then I'll whisper you," she said.

Her beautiful little arms, wreathing about his neck, drew his ear to her lips.

She whispered.

He chuckled deeply.

"Good," he said, and added--"Is that all?"

She released him and withdrew.

"For the present," she said.

They entered the yard. The light of the great stable-lantern brought them back from the land of dreams.

They cleared their throats and trod the cobbles aggressively.

She went toward the ladder. He turned off for the house.

"What time d'you take the hill?" he called.

"Six sharp."

"Right."

"Shall you be there?"

She spoke from the door of the loft, at the top of the ladder.

"Might," he said, and was gone.

CHAPTER XLI

The Spider's Web

It was Monkey Brand's cause of complaint against the young man that he was too simple; but if his suspicions were difficult to rouse, once roused they were not easily appeased.

He was up and away next morning before even Boy and Albert were about.

Dressed in a sweater and gray flannel trousers, he swung up the hill. As he reached the summit he looked back and saw the brown horse and his attendant beginning the ascent.

Swiftly he walked along the gallop, his eyes everywhere, suspecting he knew not what. The gorse grew close and dark on either side the naked course. He watched it closely as he went, and the occasional shrill spurt of a bird betrayed movement in the covert--it might be of a weasel, a fox, or a man.

The morning was chill and misty, the turf sodden and shining. At one spot the gorse marched in close-ranked upon the green until only a pa.s.sage of some thirty yards was left. As he walked down the narrow way something flashed at his feet, and caught him smartly across the shin.

He tripped and fell.

A wire was stretched across the gallop some four inches above the ground. It was taut and stout, and shone like a gossamer in the mist. He rose and followed it. It ran right athwart the course and lost itself in the gorse on either side. Silver searched and found the wire was bound about two wooden pegs that had been hammered into the earth.

The pegs were so fast that his fall against the wire had not shifted them.

He looked back along the way he had come.

The horse had not yet made his appearance on the brow.

Bending over a peg, and bowing his back, the young man heaved, twisted, and lurched. It took him all his time to uproot it, but he did so at last.

Then he glanced up.

Four-Pound-the-Second had topped the brow half a mile away.

Silver took the peg and began to roll up the wire leisurely. As he did so he was aware of a man standing in the gorse on the other side of the gallop watching him. Silver did not raise his eyes, but had no doubt as to the man's ident.i.ty.

It was the other who opened the conversation, coming out of the gorse on to the track.

"That's an ugly bit of wire," he said. "Now how did that get there, I wonder?"

"Spider spun it, I guess," answered the young man laconically.

"What!" laughed the other. "Gossamer is it?"

"Yes," said Silver. "And not bad gossamer at that." He looked up suddenly. "Where did you get it from?--the same place you bought the mallet in Brighton?"

The tout swaggered across the green.

"See here, Silver," he said. "None of that. You're not in the position to come it over me now you've joined the great company of gentlemen-adventurers. There's nothing in it since the Bank broke. We both stand together on the common quicksands of economic insecurity."

Silver wound up the wire.

"Common quicksands of economic insecurity is good," he said deliberately. "Distinctly good."

"Yes," replied the other. "I learned it at Oxford, where I learned a lot besides. Or to put it straight, we're both naked men now--stripped to the world. And I'm as good a man as you are."

Silver dropped the wire and advanced leisurely.

"Are you?" he said. "I doubt it. But we'll soon see."

The fat man produced a mallet from behind his back.