about his legs, up to his waist; at times, when he
floundered he was all but lost in it. He lay still like a dead man; he
struggled, and began crawling on again. He stopped and looked about him
--how her heart pounded then! He was looking for something, seeking
something! Her!

She was so certain it must be Brodie. Yet she remained motionless,
powerless to move though she remembered King's word of the hiding-place
where she would be safe; she peered out, fascinated.

In time the man came closer and the first suspicion entered her mind
that, after all, it might not be Brodie. He stopped; he was exhausted;
he pulled off his hat and ran his hand across his face. Then, still
bareheaded, he looked up. It was Gratton!

Gratton alone; Gratton looking back over his shoulder more often than he
quested far ahead; Gratton in a mad attempt to make haste where haste
was impossible. Now his every gesture bespoke a frantic haste. He was
escaping from something. Then, what? He had left the other men; he was
running away from them. She knew it as well as if he had screamed it
into her ears. A sudden spurt of pity for him entered her heart; he
seemed so beaten and bewildered and frantic and terrified; who, better
than she, could sympathize with one in Gratton's predicament? She looked
far down the gorge; she could see, like a bluish crooked shadow, the
trail which he had made after him. No one else in sight! Then she forgot
everything saving that she and Gratton were alone, that they had been
friends, that they were bound in a common fate. She leaned as far out as
she could; he was just below now; she called to him.

He stopped dead in his tracks; he jerked his head up and stared wildly;
his mouth dropped open, and in the shock of the moment speech was denied
him. She called again.

"You!" Had not the silence been so complete his gasping voice would have
failed to reach her; as it was she barely heard it. "You, Gloria? Here?
My God--have I gone mad?"

The man's villainy of so few days ago appeared now, in the biassed light
of circumstance, a pardonable, a forgettable offence. He had loved her;
he had wanted to marry her; he had, with that in mind, tricked her. He
had taken advantage of the universal admission that in love as in war
all things were fair. The ugliness of what he had done was chiefly ugly
because it had lain against a background of commonplace and convention;
here, at the time when no considerations existed save the e