y. When at last it opened she laughed wildly.

Before her, his tall body, clad in warm, heavy clothes, stood a man
whose dark eyes grew wet with tears of pity the instant they saw her. He
lifted her in his arms like a child and carried her inside. She had a
fleeting sense of being at home, she thought he was her husband and
threw her arms around him passionately, then, remembering Lawrence, she
murmured as he laid her down, "Out there--behind the cabin!" and was
unconscious.

The man turned and hurried out. In a few minutes he came back, carrying
Lawrence, and his face was lined with pity at the state of these two
human beings.

He laid them together on a wide berth at the side of the cabin and began
to work over them alternately. Swiftly and deftly he heated blankets and
prepared food. He wound them in the hot cloth, chafed their hands and
arms, and forced brandy down their throats.

Lawrence's eyelids drew back.

"The man is blind," muttered the stranger in Spanish.

Claire was looking at him dazedly and reaching greedily toward the
kettle that simmered over a great open fireplace.

He brought a bowl of hot savory soup and started feeding them. Lawrence
swallowed mechanically, but he could hardly get the spoon out of
Claire's mouth.

"Not too much, _senora_," he said, turning away.

When he looked again toward them they were both asleep. The utter
exhaustion of their long night claimed rest. He walked over to Claire
and stood looking down at her.

"She was beautiful," he thought. "And he is blind. Ah, well, for her,
beauty is again possible, but for him"--he shrugged his shoulders--"it
is bad, bad!" he said softly, and, turning to a shelf of books that
stood against the wall, he drew out a volume and sat down before the
fire to read.

CHAPTER VI.

THE STONE THREAT.

When Claire awoke she stared around her for a few minutes before the
events of their frantic struggle came back to her. Her eyes strayed to
the figure before the fireplace. Idly she noted the lustrous, wavy black
hair and deep brown eyes protected by unusually heavy lashes. It was
clearly the face of a thinker, a dreamer, yet there was something
sensual about the mouth, potentially voluptuous, abandoned, and
suggestive of tremendous passion that slumbered close beneath the brain
that was so actively awake. Claire ached, and her body tingled with the
unaccustomed warmth. She lay quiet, looking at the fire, her mind still
uncertain