take me away? You promise?"

"My dear child, that is just what I came for," he said, feigning to be
surprised at her questions. "Fifteen hundred miles for just that. _Now_
don't you believe all that I've told you about the picture?"

"Yes," she nodded.

She had drawn back, and was looking at him so steadily and with such
wondering depths in her eyes that he found himself compelled for an
instant to turn his own gaze carelessly away.

"And you used to talk to it," she said, "and it seemed _alive_?"

"Very much alive, Marge."

"And you _dreamed_ about me?"

He _had_ said that, and he felt again that warm rise of blood. He felt
himself in a difficult place. If she had been older, or even younger....

"Yes," he said truthfully.

He feared one other question was quite uncomfortably near. But it didn't
come. The girl rose suddenly to her feet, flung back her hair, and ran
to Tara, dozing in the sun. What she was saying to the beast, with her
arms about his shaggy neck, David could only guess. He found himself
laughing again, quietly of course, with his back to her, as he picked up
their dinner things. He had not anticipated such an experience as this.
It rather unsettled him. It was amusing--and had a decided thrill to
it. Undoubtedly Hauck and Brokaw were rough men; from what she had told
him he was convinced they were lawless men, engaged in a very wide
"underground" trade in whisky. But he believed that he would not find
them as bad as he had pictured them at first, even though the Nest was a
horrible place for the girl. Her running away was the most natural thing
in the world--for her. She was an amazingly spontaneous little creature,
full of courage and a fierce determination to fight some one, but
probably to-day or to-morrow she would have been forced to turn
homeward, quite exhausted with her adventure, and nibbling roots along
with Tara to keep herself alive. The thought of her hunger and of the
dire necessity in which he had found her, drove the smile from his lips.
He was finishing his pack when she left the bear and came to him.

"If we are to get over the mountain before dark we must hurry," she
said. "See--it is a big mountain!"

She pointed to a barren break in the northward range, close up to the
snow-covered peaks.

"And it's cold up there when night comes," she added.

"Can you make it?" David asked. "Aren't you tired? Your feet sore? We
can wait here until morning...."

"I can climb it," sh