she searched
the years to come--even as her eyes so futilely searched the distant
landscape beyond the mighty gates that seemed, now, to shut her in from
that world to which Aaron King was returning.

The girl was aroused from her abstraction by a sound behind her and a
little to the left of the tree against which she was leaning. In a flash,
she was on her feet.

James Rutlidge stood a few steps away. He had been approaching her as she
sat under the tree; but when she sprang to her feet and faced him, he
halted. Lifting his hat, he greeted her with easy assurance; a confident,
triumphant smile upon his heavy features.

White-faced and trembling, the mountain girl--who a few moments before,
had been so unafraid--stood shrinking before this cultured representative
of the arts. Returning his salutation, she was starting hurriedly away
down the trail, when he said, "Wait. Why be in such a hurry?"

As if against her will, she paused. "It is growing late," she faltered; "I
must go."

He laughed. "I will go with you presently. Don't be afraid." Coming
forward, with an air of making himself very much at home, he placed his
rifle against the tree where she had been sitting. Then, as if to calm her
fears, he continued, "I am camped at Burnt Pine, with a party of friends.
I was up here looking for deer sign when I noticed you below, at the cabin
there. I was just starting down to you, when I saw that you were going to
come up; so I waited. Beautiful spot--this--don't you think?--so out of
the way, too. Just the place for a quiet little visit."

As the man spoke, he was eyeing her in a way that only served to confuse
and frighten her the more. Murmuring some inaudible reply, she again
started to go. But again he said, peremptorily, "Wait." And again, as if
against her will, she paused. "If you have no scruples about wandering
over the mountains alone with that artist fellow, I do not see why you
should hesitate to favor me."

The man's words were, undoubtedly, prompted by what he firmly believed to
be the nature of the relation between the girl and Aaron King--a belief
for which he had, to his mind, sufficient evidence. But Sibyl had no
understanding of his meaning. In the innocence of her pure mind, the
purport of his words was utterly lost. Her very fear of the man was not a
reasoning fear, but the instinctive shrinking of a nature that had never
felt the unclean touch of the world in which James Rutlidge habitually
move