He was too busy studying and working. It must be something in his subconscious memory that was brought to him by the look in that girl’s eyes.

These thoughts were vaguely passing through his mind as he sprang, annoyed, from his car and went to investigate the other one. What a nuisance it was to be interrupted at this point in his journey, when he had only just so much time and quite a good many things he wanted to do before he went on his way back to camp to meet whatever was about to be the next scene in his life.

Laurel Sheridan had turned from the highway several miles back into a wooded road that she thought was the shortcut around the high hill that was familiarly known in that vicinity as Crimson Mountain because of its gorgeous color in the autumn. But Laurel did not choose that road for its beauty, although it was glowing and lovely. She was in a hurry. She was going to be late for an appointment, and she was worried. She thought she remembered that this road was supposed to be the shortcut to Carrollton. But it didn’t seem to be so short. It certainly was farther than she remembered. Could she have made a mistake? It wasn’t a very good road either, but she had come so far now she couldn’t turn back. Oh, this must be right.

So, frantically she stepped on the gas and mounted the hill, surprised at the sharp turn to the right that the road took when it ought to have turned left. She glanced at the clock in the car, calculating whether she could possibly get to that high school before it was entirely too late for her purpose.

She was two-thirds of the way up the hill, and beginning to count the distance ahead and discount time, when suddenly her car began to buck like a balky horse, and then it stopped dead!

She cast an annoyed glance at her dial. She couldn’t be out of gas, could she? Horrors! With no filling station probably till she got to the foot of the mountain on the other side. She seemed to be all turned around. Which way was Carrollton, anyway? She certainly must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Oh, it couldn’t be her gas was out! And she was still going up. Oh, if she could only make the top of the hill, perhaps she could coast down safely and make a filling station. In vain she tried to start the car again, yet the dial showed a little gas. What a fool she had been to take this road, with no place to get help if she had trouble. This couldn’t be the old shortcut across Crimson Mountain. She hadn’t had any doubt when she turned into the dirt road. It had seemed just as she remembered it, but now as she gave a quick look around, somehow it didn’t seem so familiar. She must have made a mistake. She tried to think back to the days of her little girlhood when her class had been brought into the woods for a picnic one day. What a happy time they’d had, and how she had always looked wistfully toward that dirt road into which their cars had turned that day to bring them to the lovely woods on the top of old Crimson. The look of that rough dirt road had always held a charm for her all that next winter after the picnic, whenever they drove down the highway. To tell the truth, that was the main reason why she had turned into it today, although she had heard it was a shorter way, and she was in a hurry. After all, it was nearly five years since she had been in this region, and there might have been two roads. She had passed one about a quarter of a mile before she reached this one. But it had seemed to her too fine a road to lead to the old picnic place.