eat. She
wondered afterward that she did not collapse, and sink into the plunging
rapids to drown, beaten and bruised against the rocks. It was a muscular
instinct that sustained her rather than a conscious impulse of
self-preservation. Motionless, horrified, amazed, she could only gaze at
the empty fissure of the tree on the slope. She could not then
discriminate the wild, spectral imaginations that assailed her untutored
mind. She could not remember these fantasies later. It was a relief so
great that the anguish of the physical reaction was scarcely less
poignant than the original shock when she realized that this face was
not the grisly skeleton lineaments that had looked out thence
heretofore, but was clothed with flesh, though gaunt, pallid, furtive.
Once more, as she gazed, it appeared in a mere glimpse at the fissure,
and in that instant a glance was interchanged. The next moment a hand
appeared,--beckoning her to approach.

It was a gruesome mandate. She had scant choice. She did not doubt that
this was the fugitive, the "wolf's head," and should she turn to flee,
he could stop her progress with a pistol-ball, for doubtless he would
fancy her alert to disclose the discovery and share in the reward.
Perhaps feminine curiosity aided fear; perhaps only her proclivity to
find an employ in the management of others influenced her decision;
though trembling in every fibre, she crossed the interval of water, and
made her way up the slope. But when she reached the fateful tree it was
she who spoke first. He cast so ravenous a glance at the basket on her
arm that all his story of want and woe was revealed. Starvation had
induced his disclosure of his identity.

"It's empty," she said, inverting the basket. She watched him flinch,
and asked wonderingly, "Is game skeerce?"

His eyes were at once forlorn and fierce. "Oh, yes, powerful skeerce,"
he replied with a bitter laugh.

There was an enigma in the rejoinder; she did not stay to read the
riddle, but went on to possess the situation, according to her wont. "Ye
hev tuk a powerful pore place ter hide," she admonished him. "This tree
is a plumb cur'osity. Gran'dad Kettison war tellin' some camp-hunters
'bout'n it jes this evenin'. Like ez not they'll kem ter view it."

His eyes dilated with a sudden accession of terror that seemed always
a-smoulder. "Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!" he moaned wretchedly.

Meddlesome was true to her name and tradition. "Ye oughter hev
remembered t