e left
Clinch's. But it was a wild chance that he would ever run across her.

And probably he never would have if the man that she was looking for had
not fired a shot on the edge of that vast maze of stream, morass and
dead timber called Owl Marsh.

Far away in the open forest Stormont heard the shot and turned in that
direction.

But Eve already was very near when the young man who called himself Hal
Smith fired at one of Harrod's deer -- a three-prong buck on the edge of
the dead water.

* * * * *

Smith had drawn and dressed the buck by the time the girl found him.

He was cleaning up when she arrived, squatting by the water's edge when
he heard her voice across the swale:

"Smith! The State Troopers are looking for you!"

He stood up, dried his hands on his breeches. The girl picked her way
across the bog, jumping from one tussock to the next.

When she told him what had happened he began to laugh.

"Did you really stick up this man?" she asked incredulously.

"I'm afraid I did, Eve," he replied, still laughing.

The girl's entire expression altered.

"So that's the sort you are," she said. "I thought you different. But
you're all a rotten lot----"

"Hold on," he interrupted, "what do you mean by that?"

"I mean that the only men who ever come to Star Pond are crooks," she
retorted bitterly. "I didn't believe you were. You look decent. But
you're as crooked as the rest of them -- and it seems as if I -- I
couldn't stand it -- any longer----"

"If you think me so rotten, why did you run all the way form Clinch's to
warn me?" he asked curiously.

"I didn't do it for _you;_ I did it for my father. They'll jail him if
they catch him hiding you. They've got it in for him. If they put him
in prison he'll die. He couldn't stand it. I _know._ And that's why I
came to find you and tell you to clear out----"

The distant crack of a dry stick checked her. The next instant she
picked up his rifle, seized his arm, and fairly dragged him into a
spruce thicket.

"Do you want to get my father into trouble!" she said fiercely.

The rocky flank of Star Peak bordered the marsh here.

"Come on," she whispered, jerking him along the thicket and up the rocks
to a cleft -- a hole in the sheer rock overhung by shaggy hemlock.

"Get in there," she said breathlessly.

"Whoever comes," he protested, "will see the buck yonder, and will
certainly look in here----"

"Not if I go down there and take