ly,
"with _me_ again. I can promise you that as well as if he had sworn
it."

"Let him pass now," said Low; "that will come later on," he added,
unconsciously repeating her thought in a tone that made her heart sick.
"But tell me, Teresa, why did you go to Excelsior?"

She buried her head still deeper, as if to hide it. He felt her broken
heart beat against his own; he was conscious of a depth of feeling her
rival had never awakened in him. The possibility of Teresa loving him
had never occurred to his simple nature. He bent his head and kissed
her. She was frightened, and unloosed her clinging arms; but he
retained her hand, and said, "We will leave this accursed place, and
you shall go with me as you said you would; nor need you ever leave me,
unless you wish it."

She could hear the beating of her own heart through his words; she
longed to look at the eyes and lips that told her this, and read the
meaning his voice alone could not entirely convey. For the first time
she felt the loss of her sight. She did not know that it was, in this
moment of happiness, the last blessing vouchsafed to her miserable
life.

A few moments of silence followed, broken only by the distant rumor of
the conflagration and the crash of falling boughs. "It may be an hour
yet," he whispered, "before the fire has swept a path for us to the
road below. We are safe here, unless some sudden current should draw
the fire down upon us. You are not frightened?" She pressed his hand;
she was thinking of the pale face of Dunn, lying in the secure retreat
she had purchased for him at such a sacrifice. Yet the possibility of
danger to him now for a moment marred her present happiness and
security. "You think the fire will not go north of where you found me?"
she asked softly.

"I think not," he said; "but I will reconnoitre. Stay where you are."

They pressed hands and parted. He leaped upon the slanting trunk and
ascended it rapidly. She waited in mute expectation.

There was a sudden movement of the root on which she sat, a deafening
crash, and she was thrown forward on her face.

The vast bulk of the leaning tree, dislodged from its aerial support by
the gradual sapping of the spring at its roots, or by the crumbling of
the bark from the heat, had slipped, made a half revolution, and,
falling, overbore the lesser trees in its path, and tore, in its
resistless momentum, a broad opening to the underbrush.

With a cry to Low, Teresa staggered