unds in the air: a
metallic tapping like the intermittent drumming of a woodpecker mingled
with a rustling as of some small animal scurrying back and forth over
the dead leaves. The girl leaned forward, listening intently. Then three
men appeared in the farther crooking of the spring path, and at the
first glimpse of them she slipped from the flat stone to cower behind
Tom, trembling, shaking with terror.

"Hide me, Tom-Jeff! Oh, for God's sake, hide me, quick!" she panted.
"Lookee there!"

He looked and saw the three men walking slowly up the pipe-line which
drained the barrel-spring. They were too far away to be recognizable to
him, and since they were stopping momently to examine the pipe, there
was good hope of an escape unseen.

Tom waited breathless for the propitious instant when the tapping of the
pipe-men's hammers should drown the noise of a dash for effacement. When
it came, he flung himself backward, whipped Nan over his head and out of
the line of sight as if she had been feather-light, and rolled swiftly
after her.

Before she could rise he had picked her up and was dragging her to the
climbing point under the lip of the boulder cave.

"Up with you!" he commanded, making a step of his hand. "Give me your
foot and then climb to my shoulder--quick!" But she drew back.

"Oh, I can't!" she gasped. "I--I'm too skeered!"

Tom's brows went together in the Gordon frown. Bone-meltings and
blood-firings apart, he was neither a fool nor a dastard, and he was
older now than on that day when the storm had driven them to take refuge
in the heart of the great rock. And since he had decided that the cavern
was only big enough for one, he had meant to put Nan up, going himself
to meet the intruders to make sure that they should not discover her.
But her trembling fit--a new and curious thing in the girl who used to
make his flesh creep with her reckless daring--spoiled the plan.

"Can't you climb up?" he demanded.

She shook her head despairingly, and he lost no time in trying to
persuade her. Jumping to catch the lip of the cavern's mouth, he
ascended cat-like, and a moment later he had drawn her up after him.

"I'd like to know what got the matter with you all at once," he said
severely, when they were crowded together in the narrow rock cell; and
then, without waiting for her answer: "You stay here while I drop down
and keep those fellows away from this side of things."

But it was too late. The men were al