in the soft,
white, fleecy veil of fog. Whatever light or fire might have betokened
human habitation was hidden. To push on blindly would be madness; he
could only wait for morning. It suited the outcast's lazy philosophy.
He crept back again to his bed in the hollow and slept. In that
profound silence and shadow, shut out from human association and
sympathy by the ghostly fog, what torturing visions conjured up by
remorse and fear should have pursued him? What spirit passed before
him, or slowly shaped itself out of the infinite blackness of the wood?
None. As he slipped gently into that blackness he remembered with a
slight regret, some biscuits that were dropped from the coach by a
careless luncheon-consuming passenger. That pang over, he slept as
sweetly, as profoundly, as divinely, as a child.

CHAPTER II.

He awoke with the aroma of the woods still steeping his senses. His
first instinct was that of all young animals: he seized a few of the
young, tender green leaves of the yerba buena vine that crept over his
mossy pillow and ate them, being rewarded by a half berry-like flavor
that seemed to soothe the cravings of his appetite. The languor of
sleep being still upon him, he lazily watched the quivering of a
sunbeam that was caught in the canopying boughs above. Then he dozed
again. Hovering between sleeping and waking, he became conscious of a
slight movement among the dead leaves on the bank beside the hollow in
which he lay. The movement appeared to be intelligent, and directed
toward his revolver, which glittered on the bank. Amused at this
evident return of his larcenious friend of the previous day, he lay
perfectly still. The movement and rustle continued, and it now seemed
long and undulating. Lance's eyes suddenly became set; he was
intensely, keenly awake. It was not a snake, but the hand of a human
arm, half hidden in the moss, groping for the weapon. In that flash of
perception he saw that it was small, bare, and deeply freckled. In an
instant he grasped it firmly, and rose to his feet, dragging to his own
level as he did so, the struggling figure of a young girl.

"Leave me go!" she said, more ashamed than frightened.

Lance looked at her. She was scarcely more than fifteen, slight and
lithe, with a boyish flatness of breast and back. Her flushed face and
bare throat were absolutely peppered with minute brown freckles, like
grains of spent gunpowder. Her eyes, which were large and gray,
present