She was looking at him very tenderly, if he had only known it, but he
did not, for his face was set in discontented lines straight before him.

"It is true," he replied.

They walked on in silence, while gradually the dangerous fascination of
the woods crept down on them. Just before sunset a hush falls on nature.
The wind has died, the birds have not yet begun their evening songs, the
light itself seems to have left off sparkling and to lie still across
the landscape. Such a hush now lay on their spirits. Over the way a
creeper was droning sleepily a little chant,--the only voice in the
wilderness. In the heart of the man, too, a little voice raised itself
alone.

"Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart!" it breathed over and over again.
After a while he said it gently in a half voice.

"No, no, hush!" said the girl, and she laid the soft, warm fingers of
one hand across his lips, and looked at him from a height of superior
soft-eyed tenderness as a woman might look at a child. "You must not. It
is not right."

Then he kissed the fingers very gently before they were withdrawn, and
she said nothing at all in rebuke, but looked straight before her with
troubled eyes.

The voices of evening began to raise their jubilant notes. From a
tree nearby the olive thrush sang like clockwork; over beyond carolled
eagerly a black-throat, a myrtle warbler, a dozen song sparrows, and a
hundred vireos and creepers. Down deep in the blackness of the ancient
woods a hermit thrush uttered his solemn bell note, like the tolling of
the spirit of peace. And in Thorpe's heart a thousand tumultuous voices
that had suddenly roused to clamor, died into nothingness at the music
of her softly protesting voice.

Chapter XLII

Thorpe returned to Camp One shortly after dark. He found there Scotty
Parsons, who had come up to take charge of the crew engaged in clearing
French Creek. The man brought him a number of letters sent on by
Collins, among which was one from Wallace Carpenter.

After commending the camping party to his companion's care, and giving
minute directions as to how and where to meet it, the young fellow went
on to say that affairs were going badly on the Board.

"Some interest that I haven't been able to make out yet has been
hammering our stocks down day after day," he wrote. "I don't understand
it, for the stocks are good--they rest on a solid foundation of value
and intrinsically are worth more than is bid for them