.

Then he came close to her where she stood holding his handkerchief
against her mouth and looking at him out of steady eyes as deeply blue
as gentian blossoms.

"Eve," he said, "you win. But you won't forgive me. ... I wish we
could be friends, some day. ... We never can, now. ... Good-bye."

Neither spoke again. Then, of a sudden, the girl's eyes filled; and
Trooper Stormont caught her free hand and kissed it; -- kissed it again
and again, -- dropped it and went striding away through the underbrush
which was now all rosy with the rays of the sunset.

* * * * *

After he had disappeared, the girl, Eve, went to the cleft in the rocks
above.

"Come out," she said contemptuously. "It's a good thing you hid,
because there was a real man after you; and God help you if he ever
finds you!"

Hal Smith came out.

"Pack in your meat," said the girl curtly, and flung his rifle across
her shoulder.

Through the ruddy afterglow she left the way homeward, a man's
handkerchief pressed to her wounded mouth, her eyes preoccupied with the
strangest thoughts that ever had stirred her virgin mind.

Behind her walked Darragh with his load of venison and his alias, - and
his tongue in his cheek.

Thus began the preliminaries toward the ultimate undoing of Mike Clinch.
Fate, Chance, and Destiny had undertaken the job in earnest.

* * * * *

Episode Two

The Ruling Passion

* * * * *

I

Nobody understood how Jose Quintana had slipped through the Secret
Service net spread for him at every port.

The United States authorities did not know why Quintana had come to
America. They realised merely that he arrived for no good purpose; and
they had meant to arrest and hold him for extradition if requested; for
deportation as an undesirable alien anyway.

Only two men in America knew that Quintana had come to the United States
for the purpose of recovering the famous "Flaming Jewel," stolen by him
from the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia; and stolen from Quintana,
in turn, by a private soldier in an American Forestry Regiment, on leave
in Paris. This soldier's name, probably, was Michael Clinch.

One of the men who knew why Quintana might come to America was James
Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a
hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment
of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in the North Woods.

The other man who knew why Quintana h