poke commandingly, with a force that never
before had marked him.

"Yes." The word was a faint, frightened whisper.

"My darling, kiss me!"

She kissed him with trembling lips.

"You love me?"

"I--I love you."

"You--you trust me?"

"I--oh! yes; yes."

"Then come, my doney-gal! For life or death, it is you and I, little
woman, from now on!"

Like a flash his gloom departed. He was gay, desperate, and free of all
hampering doubts. In such a mood Nella-Rose lost all fear of him and
walked by his side as complacently as if the one minister in her sordid
little world had with all his strange authority said his sacred "Amen"
over her.

CHAPTER VIII

There were five days of terrific storm. Truedale and Nella-Rose had
fought to save White's live stock--even his cabin itself; for the deluge
had attacked that while leaving safe the smaller cabin near by. All one
morning they had worked gathering debris and placing it so that it
turned the course of a rapid stream that threatened the larger house. It
had been almost a lost hope, but as the day wore on the torrent
lessened, the rough barrier held--they were successful! The gate and
snake-fence were carried away, but the rest was saved!

In the strenuous labour, in the dangerous isolation, the ordinary things
of life lost their importance. With death facing them their love and
companionship were all that were left to them and neither counted the
cost. But on the sixth day the sun shone, the flood was past, and with
safety and the sure coming of Jim White at hand, they sat confronting
each other in a silence new and potent.

"Sweetheart, you must go--for a few hours!"

Truedale bent across the table that separated them and took her clasped
hands in his. He had burned all his social bridges, but poor
Nella-Rose's progress through life had not been made over anything so
substantial as bridges. She had proceeded by scrambling down and up
primitive obstacles; she felt that at last she had come to her Land of
Promise.

"You are going to send me--away? Where?"

"Only until White returns, little girl. See here, dear, you and I are
quite gloriously mad, but others are stupidly sane and we've got to
think of them."

Truedale was talking over her head, but already Nella-Rose accepted this
as a phase of their new relations. A mountain man might still love his
woman even if he beat her and, while Nella-Rose would have scorned the
suggestion that she was a mount