the log, and tried to adjust her
skirt; but the movement only unbalanced her. With a shriek she
flattened herself, and lay there panting and miserable.

"Wait!" the voice cried, more sharply than before. "No move--for
minute!"

She was arrested by the words. "No move for minute!" It was not the
voice of Philip Haig, but in that assurance there was only a doubtful
consolation. If not Haig--who? There was something oddly foreign in
that heavy, harsh, and yet not displeasing voice. A new fear presently
mingled with the others. It was a wild country after all; and she had
taken no note of the distance she had come, and little of her
surroundings. But she could only obey, and wait.

There came the sound of quick splashing in the water, and a few
seconds later a man's head and shoulders appeared in the stream at
her side. At sight of the strange, dark countenance suddenly upturned
to her, within a foot of her own, she almost fainted. It was a face
she had never seen before, solemn, stolid, with a copper-colored skin,
high cheek bones, and deep-set, black eyes in which there was no more
expression than there was on the thin, straight lips. She closed her
eyes.

But that was only for an instant, since nothing terrible was
happening. When she dared to look again the man was quietly releasing
the offending fly. He tossed it back in the direction of the bank,
then stood for a moment regarding her, still without the trace of an
expression on his dark face.

"Don't be 'fraid!" he said. "Hold still!"

She obeyed him, though his next move was one to have brought a scream
to her lips if she had not become incapable of utterance. Standing in
the water, which came almost up to his armpits, he had kept his arms
high above the surface of the pool. Now he stretched them out toward
her, clasped both her ankles with one huge hand, slipped the other
under her waist, and with what seemed incredible strength and
assurance, lifted her off the log. Then, without so much as wetting
the edge of her skirt, he bore her to the bank, and seated her gently
on the heap of driftwood from which she had ventured so bravely only a
little while before.

Should she weep, or laugh, or rage at him? Through eyes half-blinded
by tears, she searched his face; but he met her troubled and fiery
gaze with the most perfect calm. Then, after a moment, he deliberately
turned, and stood facing squarely away from her,--an act of stoicism
that at once removed her f