was less difficult than it looked, and fifteen minutes brought them
to the upland plateau and to the door of an old cabin, made of logs, set
back in a tiny grove of cedars.

"I haven't been here for a year," cried the girl, forgetful of the
constraint which had held them until now. "It's like getting back home
for the first time! I love it."

"So do I," Lee said within himself.

"Look!" exclaimed Judith. "Some one has been repairing the old cabin!
He's made a bench yonder under the big tree, too. And he has walled in
the spring with rocks, and . . . Who in the world can it be? There's
even a little garden of wild flowers!"

Bud Lee, for no reason clear to himself, flushed. He offered no
explanation at first. Here he spent many an hour when the time was his
for idling, lying on the grass, looking out over the immensity of the
wilderness; here he came many a night to sleep under the stars, far from
the other boys, when his soul craved solitude; here upon many a Sunday,
when work was slack, did he come to smoke alone, loaf alone, read from
the few books on the cabin's shelves.

"Maybe," he suggested at last, when it was clear that Judith was going
straight to the door, "this is where our stick-up gents hang out. Choice
place for a cutthroat to hibernate, huh?"

"I don't believe it," answered Judith positively. "The man who made his
hermitage here has a soul!"

Behind her back Lee smiled.

"We've got something to do," he said hastily, "without wasting time
poking into old shacks. Where's the Indian Trail you talked about?"

"Shack!" cried Judith indignantly. "You make me sick. Bud Lee! I'd
rather own this cabin and live here, than have a palace on Fifth Avenue!"

She knocked at the door, knowing that silence would answer her, but
hoping to have a man, calm-eyed, gentle-voiced, a romantic hermit in all
of his picturesqueness, come to the door.

"Going in?" asked Lee in well-simulated carelessness.

"No," she told him freezingly. "Why should I? Would you want people
poking about into your home just because it was in the heart of the
wilderness and you weren't there to drive them out?"

"No," answered Bud gravely. "Now that you ask me, I wouldn't! Let's go
find that trail."

"But," continued Judith, "not being a fool, and realizing that one of the
men we want might possibly be in hiding in here, I am going to peek in."

"Not being a fool," he repeated after her, adding gently, "and being a