g and filled with a mysterious questioning.

David, feeling quite sure of himself, said:

"How did it happen that you were away up here, and not with your mother
that night when I met her on the train?"

"She wasn't my mother," replied the girl, looking at him still in that
strange way. "My mother is dead."

CHAPTER XVIII

After that quietly spoken fact that her mother was dead, David waited
for Marge O'Doone to make some further explanation. He had so firmly
convinced himself that the picture he had carried was the key to all
that he wanted to know--first from Tavish, if he had lived, and now from
the girl--that it took him a moment or two to understand what he saw in
his companion's face. He realized then that his possession of the
picture and the manner in which it had come into his keeping were
matters of great perplexity to her, and that the woman whom he had met
in the Transcontinental held no significance for her at all, although he
had told her with rather marked emphasis that this woman--whom he had
thought was her mother--had been searching for a man who bore her own
name, O'Doone. The girl was plainly expecting him to say something, and
he reiterated this fact--that the woman in the coach was very anxious to
find a man whose name was O'Doone, and that it was quite reasonable to
suppose that _her_ name was O'Doone, especially as she had with her this
picture of a girl bearing that name. It seemed to him a powerful and
utterly convincing argument. It was a combination of facts difficult to
get away from without certain conclusions, but this girl who was so near
to him that he could almost feel her breath did not appear fully to
comprehend their significance. She was looking at him with wide-open,
wondering eyes, and when he had finished she said again:

"My mother is dead. And my father is dead, too. And my aunt is dead--up
at the Nest. There isn't any one left but my uncle Hauck, and he is a
brute. And Brokaw. He is a bigger brute. It was he who made me let him
take this picture--two years ago. I have been training Tara to kill--to
kill any one that touches me, when I scream."

It was wonderful to watch her eyes darken, to see her pupils grow big
and luminous. She did not look at the picture clutched in her hands, but
straight at him.

"He caught me there, near the creek. He _frightened_ me. He _made_ me
let him take it. He wanted me to take off my...."

A flood of wild blood rushed into her