t and handed it to Ruth,
saying:

"Take this and the paper along to Mother. She'll want to see them
right away. And say, Ruth," he went on, as he looked anxiously at the
great sloping stretches of bone-dry underbrush that lay between them
and his home on the hill three miles away, "the country's awful dry.
If anything happens, get Mother and Aunt Letty down out of this
country. You can make them go. Nobody else could."

The girl had not yet spoken. There was no need for her to ask
questions. She knew what lay under every one of Jeffrey's pauses and
silences. It was no time for many words. He was laying upon her a
trust to look after the ones whom he loved.

She put out her hand to his and said simply:

"I'm glad we didn't quarrel, Jeff."

"I was a fool," said Jeffrey gruffly, as he wrung her hand. "But I'll
remember. Forgive me, please, Ruth."

"There's nothing to forgive--ever--between us, Jeffrey. Go now," she
said softly.

Jeffrey wheeled his horse and followed the other man back over the
hill on the road which he and Ruth had come. Ruth sat still until they
were out of sight. At the very last she saw Jeffrey swing his rifle
across the saddle in front of him, and a shadow fell across her heart.
She would have given everything in her world to have had back what she
had said of seeing murder in Jeffrey's eyes.

Jeffrey and Myron Stocking rode steadily up the French Village road
for an hour or so. Then they turned off from the road and began a long
winding climb up into the higher levels of the Racquette country.

"We might as well head for Bald Mountain right away," said Jeffrey, as
they came about sundown to a fork in their trail. "The breeze comes
straight down from the east. That's where the danger is, if there is
any."

"I suppose you're right, Jeff. But it means we'll have to sleep out if
we go that way."

"I guess that won't hurt us," Jeffrey returned. "If anything happens
we might have to sleep out a good many nights--and a lot of other
people would have to do the same."

"All right then," Stocking agreed. "We'll get a bite and give the
horses a feed and a rest at Hosmer's, that's about two miles over the
hills here; and then we can go on as far as you like."

At Hosmer's they got food enough for two days in the hills, and
having fed and breathed the horses they rode on up into the higher
woods. They were now in the region of the uncut timber where the great
trees were standing from the beginni