ood God! all of it! 'Tana--"

In his voice was all the feeling which compels sympathy, or else builds up
a wall that bars it out. But in the eyes of the girl, startled though she
was, no resistance could be read. Her hand was in his, her face lifted to
him, and alight with sudden gladness. In his eyes she read the force of
an irresistible power taking possession of a man's soul and touching her
with its glory.

"'Tana!" he said very softly, in a tone she had never before heard Dan
Overton use--a tone hushed and reverent and appealing. "_'Tana!_"

Did he guess all the stormy emotions locked alone in the girl's heart, and
wearing out her strength? Did he guess all the childish longing to feel
strong, loving arms around her as a shield? His utterance of her name drew
her to him. His arm fell around her shoulders, and her head was bowed
against his breast. The hat she wore had fallen to the ground, and as he
bent over her, his hand caressed her hair tenderly, but there was more of
moody regret than of joy in his face.

"'Tana, my girl! poor little girl!" he said softly.

But she shook her head.

"No--not so poor now," she half whispered and looked up at him--"not so
very poor."

Then she uttered a half-strangled scream of terror and broke away from
him; for across his shoulder she saw a face peering at her from the
shadows of the over-hanging bushes above them, a white, desperate face, at
sight of which she staggered back and would have fallen had Overton not
caught her.

He had not seen the cause of her alarm, and for one instant thought it was
himself from whom she shrank.

"Tell me--what is it?" he demanded. "'Tana, speak to me!"

She did not speak, but a rustle in the bushes above them caught his ear;
and looking up, he saw a form pass lightly through the shadows and away
from them. He could not tell whether it was an Indian, a white man, or
even an animal scampering off that way through the bushes. But anything
that spied like that and ran when discovered was a thing to shoot at. He
dropped his hand to his revolver, but she caught his arm.

"No, Dan! Oh, don't--don't shoot him!"

He stared at her, conscious that it was no ordinary fear that whitened her
face. What did it mean? She herself had just come from the woods--pale,
agitated, and with only a semblance of flower gathering to explain her
absence. Had she met some one there--some one who--

He let go of her and started to run up the side of the stee