stillness the
young man sprang up so suddenly that Nellie was still half clinging to
his neck as he stood erect. "Hush!" he whispered; "some one is near!"

He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the slanting
tree-trunk, and running half-way up its incline with the agility of a
squirrel, stretched himself at full length upon it and listened.

To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an age before
he rejoined her.

"You are safe," he said; "he's going by the western trail toward Indian
Spring."

"Who is _he_?" she asked, biting her lips with a poorly restrained
gesture of mortification and disappointment.

"Some stranger," replied Low.

"As long as he wasn't coming here, why did you give me such a fright?"
she said pettishly. "Are you nervous because a single wayfarer happens
to stray here?"

"It was no wayfarer, for he tried to keep near the trail," said Low.
"He was a stranger to the wood, for he lost his way every now and then.
He was seeking or expecting some one, for he stopped frequently and
waited or listened. He had not walked far, for he wore spurs that
tinkled and caught in the brush; and yet he had not ridden here, for no
horse's hoofs passed the road since we have been here. He must have
come from Indian Spring."

"And you heard all that when you listened just now?" asked Nellie half
disdainfully.

Impervious to her incredulity, Low turned his calm eyes on her face.
"Certainly, I'll bet my life on what I say. Tell me: do you know
anybody in Indian Spring who would likely spy upon you?"

The young girl was conscious of a certain ill-defined uneasiness, but
answered, "No."

"Then it was not _you_ he was seeking," said Low thoughtfully. Miss
Nellie had not time to notice the emphasis, for he added, "You must go
at once, and lest you have been followed I will show you another way
back to Indian Spring. It is longer, and you must hasten. Take your
shoes and stockings with you until we are out of the bush."

He raised her again in his arms and strode once more out through the
covert into the dim aisles of the wood. They spoke but little; she
could not help feeling that some other discordant element, affecting
him more strongly than it did her, had come between them, and was half
perplexed and half frightened. At the end of ten minutes he seated her
upon a fallen branch, and telling her he would return by the time she
had resumed her shoes and stockings glided from her like