eyes, the end would rush upon them, overwhelm them,
carry them along like straws on the flooding river. At last his head was
turned; he looked.

She lay on her back, smiling as she slept. One arm hung down from the
bunk and the graceful fingers trailed, palm up, on the floor, curling a
little, as if she had just relaxed her grasp on something. And down past
her shoulder, half covering the whiteness of her arm, fled the torrent
of brown hair, with the firelight playing through it like a sunlit mist.

He rose, and dressed with a deadly caution, for he knew that he must go
at once, partly for her sake that he must be seen apart from her this
night--partly because he knew that he must leave and never come back.

He had hit upon the distinctive feature of the girl--a purity as thin
and clear as the air of the uplands in which she drew breath. He stooped
and smoothed down the blankets of his bunk, for no trace of him must be
seen if any other man should come during this night. He would go far
away--see and be seen--apart from Sally Fortune. He picked up his
saddle.

Before he departed he leaned low above her as she must have done above
him, until the dark shadow of lashes was tremulous against her cheek.
Then he straightened and stole step by step across the floor, to the
door, to the night; all the myriad small white eyes of the heavens
looked down to him in hushed surprise.

CHAPTER XXXVI

JERRY WOOD

When he was at the old Drew place before, Logan had told him of Jerry
Wood's place, five miles to the north among the hills; and to this he
now directed his horse, riding at a merciless speed, as if he strove to
gain, from the swift succession of rocks and trees that whirled past
him, new thoughts to supplant the ones which already occupied him.

He reached in a short time a little rise of ground below which stretched
a darkly wooded hollow, and in the midst the trees gave back from a
small house, a two-storied affair, with not a light showing. He wished
to announce himself and his name at this place under the pretence of
asking harbourage for the brief remainder of the night. The news of what
he had done at Drew's place could not have travelled before him to
Wood's house; but the next day it would be sure to come, and Wood could
say that he had seen Bard--alone--the previous night. It would be a
sufficient shield for the name of Sally Fortune in that incurious
region.

So he banged loudly at the door.

E