ips. "I never did a deed against the law of any
land that I know of, but as for the good part--that's another thing. I
may be fairly good as goodness goes."

"Goodnessgoes!" She repeated after him as if it were one word from
which she was trying to extract a meaning. "Was it then to flee from
the wicked world that you lived all the twenty years thus alone?"

"Hardly that, either. To tell the truth, it may be only a habit with
me."

"Will you forgive me that I asked? It was only that to me it has been
terrible to live always in hiding and fear. I love people, and desire
greatly to have kind people near me,--but of the world where my father
and mother lived, and at the court--and of the nobles, of all these I
am afraid."

"Yes, yes. I fancy you were." A grim look settled about his mouth,
although his eyes twinkled kindly. He marveled to think how trustingly
they accompanied him into this wilderness--but then--poor babes! What
else could they do? "You'll be safe from all the courts and nobles in
the world where I'm taking you."

"That is why my eyes do not weep for my father. He is now gone where
none can find him but God. It is very terrible that a good man should
always hide--hide and live in fear--always--even from his own kinsmen.
I understand some of the sorrows of the world."

"You'll forget it all up there."

"I will try if my mother recovers." She drew in her breath with a
little quivering catch.

"We'll wake her now, and start on. It won't do to waste daylight any
longer." Secretly he was afraid that they might be followed by
Indians, and was sorry he had made the fire in the night, but he
reasoned that he could never have brought them on without such
refreshment. Women are different from men. He could eat raw bacon and
hard-tack and go without coffee, when necessary, but to ask women to
do so was quite another thing.

For long hours now they traveled on, even after the moon had set, in
the darkness. It was just before the dawn, where the trail wound and
doubled on itself, that the sorrel horse was startled by a small
rolling stone that had been loosened on the trail above them.
Instantly the big man halted where they were.

"Are you brave enough to wait here a bit by your mother's horse while
I go on? That stone did not loosen itself. It may be nothing but some
little beast,--if it were a bear, the horses would have made a fuss."

He mounted the sorrel and went forward, leaving her standing on the