and

to a sudden

moving toward the lake. An instant later, Old Battler’s angry roar told him the hound was running loose and had prowled into something it disapproved of down there.
He was still listening, trying to analyze the commotion, when a girl in a dark sweater and skirt stepped out quietly from the shadow of the roadside pines beyond him. Hogan didn’t see her until she crossed the ditch to the road in a beautiful reaching leap. Then she was running like a rabbit for the car.
He shouted: “Julia!”
For just an instant, Julia looked back at him, her face a pale scared blur in the moonlight. Then the car door slammed shut behind her, and with a shiver and groan the old machine lurched into action. Hogan made no further attempt to stop her. Confused and unhappy, he watched the headlights sweep down the road ­until they swung out of sight around a bend.
Now what the devil had she been poking about here for?
Hogan sighed, shook his head and turned back to the camp. Old Battler’s vicious snarling had stopped; r