,
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 the Lawd 'fore ye done it," she said, with a repellent
impulse; then she would have given much to recall the reproach. The man
was desperate; his safety lay in her silence. A pistol-shot would secure
it, and anger would limber the trigger.

But he did not seem indignant. His eyes, intelligent and feverishly
bright, gazed down at her only in obvious dismay and surprise. "Done
what?" he asked, and as, prudence prevailing for once, she did not
reply, he spoke for her. "The murder, ye mean? Why, gal, I warn't even
thar. I knowed nuthin' 'bout it till later. Ez God is my helper and my
hope, I warn't even thar."

She stood astounded. "Then why n't ye leave it ter men?"

"I can't _prove_ it ag'in' the murderers' oaths. I had been consarned
in the moonshinin' that ended in murder, but _I_ hed not been nigh the
still fer a month,-