, than he uttered a low exclamation. The two women,
surrounded by their luggage and camp equipment, were sitting on the porch
with Brian Oakley; waiting, evidently, for the wagon that was crossing the
creek toward the house. It was clear to the man on the mountainside, that
Sibyl Andres and the woman with the disfigured face were returning to
Fairlands.

For some time, James Rutlidge sat watching, with absorbing interest, the
unconscious people in the canyon below. Once, he turned for a brief glance
at the grove of sycamores behind the old orchard, farther down the creek.
The camp of Conrad Lagrange and Aaron King was no longer there. Quickly he
fixed his gaze again upon Sibyl and her friends. Presently,--as one will
when looking long through a field-glass or telescope,--he lowered his
hands, to rest his eyes by looking, unaided, at the immediate objects in
the landscape before him. At that moment, the figure of a man appeared on
the near-by trail below. It was a pitiful figure--ill-kempt ragged,
half-starved, haggard-faced.

Creeping feebly along the lonely little path--without seeing the man on
the mountainside above--crouching as he walked with a hunted, fearful
air--the poor creature moved toward the point of the spur around which the
trail led beneath the spot where Rutlidge sat.

As the man on the trail drew nearer, the watcher on the rocks above
involuntarily glanced toward the distant Forest Ranger; then back to
the--as he rightly guessed--escaped convict.

There are, no doubt, many moments in the life of a man like James Rutlidge
when, however bad or dominated by evil influences he may be, he feels
strongly the impulse of pity and the kindly desire to help. Undoubtedly,
James Rutlidge inherited from his father those tendencies that made him
easily ruled by his baser passions. His character was as truly the
legitimate product of the age, of the social environment, and of the
thought that accepts such characters. What he might have been if better
born, or if schooled in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual integrity,
is an idle speculation. He was what his inheritance and his life had made
him. He was not without impulses for good. The pitiful, hunted creature,
creeping so wearily along the trail, awoke in this man of the accepted
culture of his day a feeling of compassion, and aroused in him a desire to
offer assistance. For the legal aspect of the case, James Rutlidge had all
the indifference of his kind,