with her. He had
noticed, even if she had not, that those two motionless figures at the
bridge had not advanced one step to meet her, but were maintaining an
attitude portentously watchful, it seemed to him, and boding ill for the
warmth and spontaneity of the welcome she so evidently expected.

But Pearl appeared to see nothing of this, and as she drew near the two
who awaited her, she would have flown like a bird into her father's
arms. But before she could throw her arms about him he caught her wrists
and pushed her back a step or two anything but gently.

"Why weren't you down at the bridge last night?" he asked sternly. The
old man had changed since the avalanche. There were anxious deep hollows
about his eyes which were at once brighter and more sunken than ever.
His parchment skin looked livid and lifeless and his mouth had tightened
until it was drawn in and pinched.

"Why weren't you down at the gully waiting for us?" he asked again. "The
bridge was across at midnight. The boys have been working night and day
to get you out, and this is the way you act, hiding up there in that
cabin like you'd as lief stay there as not."

"Yes, Pearl, why weren't you down to meet us?" Bob Flick spoke for the
first time, his slow, soft voice was placating and yet it was evident
that his sympathies were with Gallito. "The boys had the place all lit
up with torches while they worked, and your Pop and I waited half the
night for you down here. Why didn't you come?" Neither of the men had so
far even glanced at Seagreave, but ignored him as thoroughly as if he
were not there.

Pearl looked at Flick a moment in frowning incomprehension. Petted,
spoiled child that she was, she could not bear to be scolded where she
had expected a rapturous welcome. From Flick to her father she glanced,
and then back again. "What's the matter with you two?" she cried. "Are
you mad just because I didn't come chasing down the hill in the dead of
night? How did I know that the boys were going to get the bridge across
at midnight?"

"Because, if you'd been the sort of girl you ought to be, you wouldn't
have stayed a minute longer in that cabin than you could have helped.
You'd have stood down by the gully all night long just to show the folks
in the camp that you wouldn't stay in that cabin after there was any
chance at all for you to get away," Gallito answered her before Bob
Flick got a chance. "What made you stay up there? You and him, too," he