ndeed, wandered away from
them a few hours after the young man's departure and had been unable
to find his way back, and, until Larry Kildene came to them, they had
comforted themselves that the two men were together.

Much more Madam Manovska told her daughter that day, before she slept;
and Amalia questioned her more closely than she had ever done
concerning her father's faith. Thereafter she sat for a long time on
the bank of coarse moss and pondered, with her mother's head pillowed
on her lap. The sun reached the hour of noon, and still the mother
slept and the daughter would not waken her.

She took from the small velvet bag she always carried with her, a
crisp cake of corn meal and ate to satisfy her sharp hunger, for the
keen air and the long climb gave her the appetite belonging to the
vigorous health which was hers. They had climbed that part of the
mountain directly behind the cabin, and from the secluded spot where
they sat she could look down on it and on the paths leading to it;
thankful and happy that at last they were where all was so safe, no
fear of intrusion entered her mind. Even her first anxiety about the
Indians she had dismissed.

Now, as her eyes wandered absently over the far distance and dropped
to the nearer hills, and on down to the cabin and the patch of
cultivated ground, what was her horror to see three figures stealing
with swift, gliding tread toward the fodder shed from above, where was
no trail, only such rough and wild hillside as that by which she and
her mother had climbed. The men seemed to be carrying something slung
between them on a pole. With long, gliding steps they walked in single
file as she had seen the Indians walk on the plains.

She drew in her breath sharply and clasped her hands in supplication.
Had those men seen them? Devoutly she prayed that they might not look
up toward the heights where she and her mother sat. As they continued
to descend she lost sight of them among the pines and the undergrowth
which was more vigorous near the fall, and then they appeared again
and went into the cabin. She thought they must have been in the fodder
shed when she lost sight of them, and now she waited breathlessly to
see them emerge from the cabin. For an hour she sat thus, straining
her eyes lest she miss seeing them when they came forth, and fearing
lest her mother waken. Then she saw smoke issuing from the cabin
chimney, and her heart stopped its beating. What! Were they p