alone!"

"I'm not afraid. I've got my rifle. Besides, I'll be at Murray's
before dark, and there, as you know, I shall be in good hands. But
Claire will worry unless she knows where I am."

"She'll worry just the same."

"No. She knows Mrs. Murray very well."

"But----"

"Good-by, Mr. Smythe!"

She reached her hand to him, and he took it reluctantly.

"It's all wrong, Miss Gaylord!" he protested. "I'm convinced that I'm
acting like a fool. If anything happens to you, I'll----"

"Nothing will happen to me. Good-by!"

Smythe watched her until she was swallowed up by the woods; he looked
at the pines piling up to the distant crests of the mountains, mass on
mass, and solitude enfolding deeper solitude; he listened to the long,
low, rolling murmur of the forest, sweet but menacing. Then, with the
inward comment that he was several kinds of a blithering idiot, he
turned and rode back toward the Park, evolving various interesting but
futile theories to explain the fact that he, a man of undoubted
intelligence, had always acted the part of the giddy fool in moments
of emergency. And there was Huntington--another fool! He could foresee
a pretty dialogue between them.

CHAPTER XX

"THE TRAIL HELD TRUE"

The forest enveloped her, but she sheltered herself in its heart, and
was glad of its soothing silence. The wind had died down to a rustling
murmur in the highest foliage; through rifts in the dark-green canopy
she caught glimpses of a cool blue sky; and there was a rooty
sweetness in the air.

Mile by mile the road, a mere track traveled by Murray's team at long
intervals, grew rougher and more difficult. Soon it had abandoned the
easy grades for the gulch, and climbed steep mountain sides, in a
devious course through heavy timber, dropping to tumbling rivulets,
climbing again to hang on the edges of high cliffs, dodging here and
there among massive, outjutting rocks. Four hours she rode thus,
mounting, ever mounting, with glimpses now and then of the forests
massed green-black below, and glimpses even of the Park itself, around
the shoulder of a hill,--a patch of green and violet bright with
sunshine. And then, when weariness had begun to weigh upon her, and as
the shadows of the forest turned to glooms, she saw with a thrill of
expectation that the road dipped ahead of her into a little gulch that
lay hidden away in a cleft of the mountains. She must surely be near
her destination now; and sure enoug