would follow the trail.

"All right," she said, giving Jack a thrilling glance. "If you say so,
I'll return by the trail to please you. Good-bye, everybody."

She lifted the bushes and started toward the entrance.

"You damned fool! Stop her!" growled Wessner. "Keep her till we're
loaded, anyhow. You're playing hell! Can't you see that when this thing
is found out, there she'll be to ruin all of us. If you let her go,
every man of us has got to cut, and some of us will be caught sure."

Jack sprang forward. Freckles' heart muffled in his throat. The Angel
seemed to divine Jack's coming. She was humming a little song. She
deliberately stopped and began pulling the heads of the curious grasses
that grew all around her. When she straightened, she took a step
backward and called: "Ho! Freckles, the Bird Woman wants that natural
history pamphlet returned. It belongs to a set she is going to have
bound. That's one of the reasons we put it under the box. You be sure to
get them as you go home tonight, for fear it rains or becomes damp with
the heavy dews."

"All right," said Freckles, but it was in a voice that he never had
heard before.

Then the Angel turned and sent a parting glance at Jack. She was
overpoweringly human and bewitchingly lovely.

"You won't forget that ride and the red tie," she half asserted, half
questioned.

Jack succumbed. Freckles was his captive, but he was the Angel's, soul
and body. His face wore the holiest look it ever had known as he softly
re-echoed Freckles' "All right." With her head held well up, the Angel
walked slowly away, and Jack turned to the men.

"Drop your damned staring and saw wood," he shouted. "Don't you know
anything at all about how to treat a lady?" It might have been a
question which of the cronies that crouched over green wood fires in the
cabins of Wildcat Hollow, eternally sucking a corncob pipe and stirring
the endless kettles of stewing coon and opossum, had taught him to do
even as well as he had by the Angel.

The men muttered and threatened among themselves, but they began working
desperately. Someone suggested that a man be sent to follow the Angel
and to watch her and the Bird Woman leave the swamp. Freckles' heart
sank within him, but Jack was in a delirium and past all caution.

"Yes," he sneered. "Mebby all of you had better give over on the saw and
run after the girl. I guess not! Seems to me I got the favors. I didn't
see no bouquets on the rest of