You surely are convinced now that I am not afraid of you, so the truce is over." I did not pretend to misunderstand.

"I'm going home at once," I told her gently, "and I shall take my spectacular crowd along with me; but I'm not sorry I came, and I hope you are not." She looked at me soberly, and then away.

"There is one thing I should like to say," she said, in so low a tone I had to lean to catch the words.
"Please don't try to ride through King's Highway again; father hates you quite enough as it is, and it is scarcely the part of a gentleman to needlessly provoke an old man." I could feel myself grow red.

What a cad I must seem to her! "King's Highway shall be safe from my vandal feet hereafter," I told her, and meant it.
"So long as you keep that promise," she said, smiling a bit, "I shall try to remember mine enemy with respect." "And I hope that mine enemy shall sometimes view the beauties of White Divide from a little distance--say half a mile or so," I answered daringly.
She heard me, but at that minute that Weaver chap came up, and she began talking to him as though he was her long-lost friend.

I was clearly out of it, so I told Edith and her mother good night, bowed to "Aunt Lodema" and got the stony stare for my reward, and rounded up my crowd.
We passed old King in a body, and he growled something I could not hear; one of the boys told me, afterward, that it was just as well I didn't.