After the glancing shot, which had flicked a handful of bark chips into Tregarvon’s lap, the firing ceased. Assuring himself that the battling moment at short range was approaching, the young man from the North sat tight, gripping the house pistol in nervous anticipation, and listening tensely for the sound of advancing footfalls.
The suspense was short. Some one, several persons, as it presently appeared, were pushing through the tangle of low-hanging undergrowth toward the oak-tree. Tregarvon wondered that there should be no attempt cautionary on the part of the enemy; wondered again, this time with nettle pricklings of foolishness, when a voice, cheerfully exultant and unmistakably feminine, cried out close at hand.
“Oh, you people—come here and see! I did hit it—lots of times; not that trifling little sheet of paper, of course”—scornfully—“but the tree, I mean. Just come and— Ee-e-ow!”
The shrill little scream of surprise and alarm was for Mr. Vance Tregarvon, issuing cautiously from behind the bulwark oak, still mystified, and still absently gripping the pistol.
The Philadelphian found himself confronting a young woman gowned in stone-blue linen, and wearing an embroidery hat to match, the hat shading a face too unaffectedly winsome to be called beautiful, perhaps, but yet the most piquant and expressive face he had ever looked upon. This young woman was carrying a target-rifle; and pinned upon the bullet-punctured side of the oak was the square of white paper at which she had evidently been shooting.
There were others coming up to join the pretty markswoman: a lean-faced, mild-eyed, spectacled gentleman of middle age, whose coat suggested the church or the schoolroom; a vivacious lady in black, with strongly marked eyebrows and eloquent hands and shoulders; a young woman who wore an artist’s smock over her walking-gown; and another who was girlish enough to wear a red tarn, and to be the prettier for it. But by preference Tregarvon made his stammering apologies to the blue embroidery hat.
“Ah—er—please don’t mind me,” he begged, acutely conscious that his abrupt and pistol-bearing entrance was handicapping him prodigiously. “I thought—that is—er—you see, I really couldn’t know that it was merely a peaceful target practice, and I——”
“Of all things!” gasped the young woman, her slate-blue eyes emphasizing her shocked amazement. “Did you really think that some one was shooting at you? But, of course, you must have! How perfectly dreadful!”
Tregarvon was trying ineffectually to hide the ornamental revolver in his coat pocket when the others closed in.
“You are sure you are not hurt?” the mild-eyed escort made haste to inquire, and Tregarvon grinned sheepishly.