dren came in at dusk. But
these he had snatched up at once and ran with them to Logan.

But the next morning, when his head was once more above water, and he
had been told all that had happened, he pulled his long white beard to
the right and to left, and at last rose up and took the two children and
led them back down the steep and stupendous mountain to his cabin. He
knew that John Logan was now a doomed man. Had he been alone, had there
been no one but himself and this hunted man, he would have stayed by his
side. As it was, it made the old man a year older to decide. And it was
like tearing his heart out by the roots, when he rose up, choking with
agony, grasped Logan's hand, bade him farewell, and led the children
hurriedly away. Once, twice, the old man stopped and turned suddenly
about, and looked sharply and almost savagely up the mountains, as if to
return. And then, each time he sighed, shook his head, and hurried on
down the hill. He held tightly on to the little brown hands of the
children, as if he feared that they, too, like himself, might let their
better natures master them, and so turn back and join the desolate and
hunted man.

That evening, after the old man had returned from his tunnel, and while
he prepared a meager meal from a few potatoes and a heel of bacon found
back in the corner of a shelf, and so hard that even the wood-rats had
refused to eat it, a passing fellow-miner put his heavy head and
shoulders in at the half open cabin and shouted out that a barn had been
burned in the valley, a house fired into, and the tomahawk of John Logan
found hard by. The children glanced at each other by the low fire-light.
But old Forty-nine only went on with his work as the head withdrew and
passed on, but he said never a word. He was very thoughtful all the
evening. He was now perfectly certain that his course had been the wise
one, the only prudent one in fact. Logan he knew was now beyond help. He
must use all his art and address to keep the children from further
peril. He made them promise to remain in his cabin, to never attempt to
reach Logan. He told them that their presence with him would only
greatly embarrass him in his flight; that they might be followed if they
attempted to reach him, and that he and they would then be taken and
sent to the Reservation together. But he told them further--and their
black eyes flashed like fire as he spoke in a voice tremulous with
emotion and earnestness--that i