social complication that threatened her
now seemed to her rather the outcome of her half-civilized parlor than
of the sylvan glade. How easy it would have been to have kept the cabin,
and then to have gone away entirely, than for her father to have allowed
them to be compromised with the growing fortunes of the settlement!
The suspicions and distrust that she had always felt of their fortunes
seemed to grow with the involuntary admission of Whiskey Dick that
they were shared by others who were practical men. She was fain to have
recourse to the prospect again to banish these thoughts, and this opened
her eyes to the fact that her companions had been missing from the trail
ahead of her for some time. She quickened her pace slightly to reach
a projecting point of rock that gave her a more extended prospect. But
they had evidently disappeared.

She was neither alarmed nor annoyed. She could easily overtake them
soon, for they would miss her, and return or wait for her at the spring.
At the worst she would have no difficulty in retracing her steps home.
In her present mood, she could readily spare their company; indeed she
was not sorry that no other being should interrupt that sympathy with
the free woods which was beginning to possess her.

She was destined, however, to be disappointed. She had not proceeded a
hundred yards before she noticed the moving figure of a man beyond her
in the hillside chaparral above the trail. He seemed to be going in the
same direction as herself, and, as she fancied, endeavoring to avoid
her. This excited her curiosity to the point of urging her horse forward
until the trail broadened into the level forest again, which she now
remembered was a part of the environs of Indian Spring. The stranger
hesitated, pausing once or twice with his back towards her, as if
engaged in carefully examining the dwarf willows to select a switch.
Christie slightly checked her speed as she drew nearer; when, as if
obedient to a sudden resolution, he turned and advanced towards her. She
was relieved and yet surprised to recognize the boyish face and figure
of George Kearney. He was quite pale and agitated, although attempting,
by a jaunty swinging of the switch he had just cut, to assume the
appearance of ease and confidence.

Here was an opportunity. Christie resolved to profit by it. She did not
doubt that the young fellow had already passed her sister on the trail,
but, from bashfulness, had not dared to app