girl flitted with the ease of
habit and familiarity.

In the concentration of his effort to keep the moving white spot in view
Ford lost count of time. Similarly he had little notion of the distance
they were covering. He guessed that they had been ten or fifteen minutes
on the way, and that they might have gone a mile, when, after waiting for
him to come almost near enough to speak to her, she began moving in a
direction at an acute angle to that by which they had come. At the same
time he perceived that they were on the side of a low wooded mountain and
that they were beating their way round it.

All at once they emerged on a tiny clearing--a grassy ledge on the slope.
Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a
vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the
serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him
forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause
of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the
door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached itself from the
surrounding darkness.

"Go in," she whispered. "Don't strike a light. There are biscuits
somewhere, in a box. Grope for them. There's a couch in a corner."

Without allowing him to speak, she forced him gently over the threshold
and closed the door upon him. Standing inside in the darkness, he heard
the grating of her key in the lock, and the rustle of her skirts as she
sped away.

III

From the heavy sleep of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds
that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that
he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento
rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of
wonder, while his still half-slumbering senses struggled for the memory of
what had happened, and the realization of where he was. When at last he
was able to reconstruct the events of the preceding night, he raised
himself on his elbow and peered about him in the dim morning twilight.

The object he discerned most readily was an easel, giving him the secret
of his refuge. On the wooden walls of the cabin, which was fairly
spacious, water-color sketches were pinned at intervals, while on the
mantelpiece above a bricked fireplace one or two stood framed. Over the
mantelpiece a pair of snow-shoes were crossed as decorations, between
which hung