"Too bad!" sympathized Philip. "I'll go with you in the morning."
"The bump on your head," suggested Diane pointedly, "is growing malignant!"
"By no means!" said Philip lazily. "With the exception of certain memory erasures, it's steadily improving."
"Why," demanded Diane with an unexpected and somewhat resentful flash of reminiscence, "why did you tell me your motor was deaf and dumb and insane when it wasn't?"
"I didn't," said Philip honestly. "If you'll recall our conversation, you'll find I worded that very adroitly."
Thoroughly vexed Diane frowned at the fire.
"Was it necessary to affect callow inexperience and such a happy-go-lucky, imbecile philosophy?" she demanded cuttingly.
"Hum!" admitted Philip humbly. "I'm a salamander."
"And you said you were waiting to be rescued!" she accused indignantly.
"Well, in a sense I was. I saw you coming through the trees--and there are times when one must talk." He met her level glance of reproach with one of frank apology. "If I see a man whose face I like, I speak to him. Surely Nature does not flash that subtle sense of magnetism for nothing. If I am to live fully, then must I infuse into my insular existence the electric spark of sympathetic friendship. Why impoverish my existence by a lost opportunity? If I had not alighted that day upon the lake and waited for you to come through the trees--" he fell suddenly quiet, knocking the ashes from his pipe upon the ground beside him.
"The moon is climbing," said Diane irrelevantly, "and Johnny is waiting to bandage your shoulder."
"Let him wait," returned Philip imperturbably. "And no matter what I do the moon will go on climbing." He lazily pointed the stem of his pipe at a firelit tree. "What glints so oddly there," he wondered, "when the fire leaps?"
"It's the bullet," replied Diane absently and bit her lip with a quick flush of annoyance.
"What bullet?" said Philip with instant interest. "It's odd I hadn't noticed it before."
"Some one shot in the forest last night while Johnny was off chasing your assailant. Likely the second man he saw cranking the car. It struck the tree. Johnny and I made a compact not to speak of it and I forgot. My aunt is fussy."
"Where were you?" demanded Philip abruptly.