ypsy took Eleanor's limp, white hand.
"She is alive," she whispered to the man.

The man nodded. He realized at once that the woods were being searched,
not for him, but for this lost girl. He could not imagine how the girl
had wandered into this dreadful place of concealment. But she was
certainly innocent of any wrong or suspicion of him. Yet, if she stayed
in the coal mine with them all day, she might die.

There has hardly ever been born into this world any human creature who
is wholly wicked. The man in the mine with Eleanor was not a cruel
fellow. He had one strange, wicked theory, that the world owed him a
living and he would rather steal than work for it.

Unexpectedly Eleanor opened her eyes. She did not cry out with terror.
She was no longer delirious. She smiled at the man and at the old woman
in a puzzled, friendly fashion. "It is so dark and dreadful in here!
Won't you take, me out?" she pleaded.

Fortunately Eleanor had fallen near enough to the entrance of the mine
to get the fresh air from the outside. She struggled to sit up, but the
pain in her shoulder again overcame her.

"How did you get in here?" the man asked Eleanor suspiciously.

"I don't know," she answered, beginning to cry gently. "Please take me
out."

The man realized that whatever was to be done for Eleanor must be done
at once. Every minute that passed made it the more dangerous for him to
return to the forest. Later on, when the woods were full of people, he
would not dare leave the mine. He knew that even now he was risking his
own freedom if he carried the girl out from the safe shelter that
concealed them.

The man lifted Eleanor in his arms as gently as he could. She cried out
when he first touched her; then she set her teeth and bore stoically the
pain of being moved.

"You can trust me," her rescuer said kindly. "I can't take you to your
friends, but I will take you to a place where they can find you. Now
you must promise me that you will never say that you have ever seen me
or the old woman, and that you will never mention the old coal mine."

Eleanor promised and the fugitive seemed impressed with her sincerity.

The man carried her about a quarter of a mile into the woods. Then he
laid her down in the grass and hurried away. Eleanor watched him with
grateful eyes. She did not wonder why the man and the old woman had come
to the mysterious hole in the earth, nor why they wished her to keep
their hiding place a secret