boldly
between the man-hunters and these children? Impossible. And so it is
that Dosson and Emens are not strangers at the old man's cabin now,
hateful as is their presence there to all. They are allowed to come and
go. And Dosson pays court to Carrie. They ply the old man with drink.
The poor, broken, brave old miner, still dreams and hopes that he will
strike it yet--and then! Sometimes he starts up in his sleep and strikes
out with his bony hands--as if to expel them from his cabin and keep
Carrie safe, sacred, pure. Then he sinks back with a groan, and Carrie
bends over him and her great eyes fill with tears.

CHAPTER V.

THE CAPTURE.

_O, the mockery of pity!
Weep with fragrant handkerchief,
In pompous luxury of grief,
Selfish, hollow-hearted city?_

_O these money-getting times!
What's a heart for? What's a hand,
But to seize and shake the land,
Till it tremble for its crimes?_

Midnight, and the mighty trees knock their naked arms together, and
creak and cry wildly in the wind. In Forty-nine's cabin, by a flickering
log-fire, Carrie sits alone. The wind howls horribly, the door creaks,
and the fire snaps wickedly; the wind roars--now the roar of a far-off
sea, and now it smites the cabin in shocks, and sifts and shakes the
snow through the shingle. The girl draws her tattered blanket tighter
about her, and sits a little closer to the fire. Now there is a sudden,
savage gust of wind, wilder, fiercer than before, and a sheet of snow
sifts in through a crack in the door, and dances over the floor.

"What a storm!" exclaims the girl, as she rises up, looks about, and
then takes the blanket from her shoulders and stuffs it in the crack by
the door.

She listens, looks about again, and then, going up to the little glass
tacked beside the fire-place, carefully arranges her splendid hair that
droops down over her shoulders in the careless, perfect fashion of
Evangeline.

"Heaven help any one who is out in this storm to-night!"

Then she takes another stick from the corner and places it on the fire.

"Forty-nine will be here soon, and Johnny; Johnny with news about
him--about poor John Logan."

She shakes her head and clasps her hands.

"It is nearly half a year since that night. They can't take him--they
dare not take him. They are hunting him--hunting him in this
storm--hunting him as if he were a wild beast. He hides with the cattle
in the sheds, with the very