he deep canyon and dark
woods, where, naked and bleeding, I disputed with the bear for his bed
in the hollow tree."

The boy springs to the door. Is it the storm that is tugging and
rattling at the latch?

But the girl seems to see, to heed, to hear only John Logan. She
clutches his hand in both her own and covers it with kisses and with
tears.

"John Logan, I pity you! I--I--" she had almost said, "I love you."

"Thank Heaven! Thank Heaven for one true heart, and one true hand when
all the world is against me! Carrie, I could die now content. The
bitterness of my heart passes away, and the wild, mad nature that made
me an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand against me, and my hand against
all, is gone. I am another being. I could die now content;" and he bows
his head.

"But you must not, you shall not die! You must go--go far away; why
hover about this place?"

"I do not know. But yonder lies the only being who ever befriended me;
and somehow I get lonesome when I get far away from her grave. And I go
round and round, like the sun around the world, and come back to where I
started from."

"But you must go--go far away--go now."

"Do you know what you are saying? I was never outside of this. All would
be strange. I would be lost, lost there. And then, do you not imagine
they are waiting for me there--everywhere? Look at my face! This tinge
of Indian blood, that all men abhor and fear, and call treacherous and
bloody. Across my brow at my birth was drawn a brand that marks me
forever--a brand--a brand as if it were the brand of Cain."

The man bows his head, and turns away.

Slowly and timidly Carrie approaches him, and she lays her hand on his
arm and looks in his face. The boy still watches by the door.

"But you will fly from here?"

His arm drops over her hair, down to her shoulder, and he draws her to
his breast, as she looks up tenderly in his face, and pleads:

"You will go now--at once? For you will die here."

"Ah, I will die here." He says this with a calm and dogged
determination. "Carrie, I have one wish, one request--only one. I know
you are weak and helpless yourself, and can't do much, and I ought not
to ask you to do anything."

Stumps has left the door as he hears the man mention that there is
something to be done, and stands by their side.

"Whatever it is you ask, John Logan, we will do it--we will do it."

The girl says this with a firmness that convinces him that it will be
done