s the stranger, so that he was nearly upon
her when Teresa first took the alarm. He was a man over six feet in
height, strongly built, with a slight tendency to a roundness of bulk
which suggested reserved rather than impeded energy. His thick beard
and moustache were closely cropped around a small and handsome mouth
that lisped except when he was excited, but always kept fellowship with
his blue eyes in a perpetual smile of half-cynical good-humor. His
dress was superior to that of the locality; his general expression that
of a man of the world, albeit a world of San Francisco, Sacramento, and
Murderer's Bar. He advanced towards her with a laugh and an
outstretched hand.

"_You_ here!" she gasped, drawing back.

Apparently neither surprised nor mortified at this reception, he
answered frankly, "Yeth. You didn't expect me, I know. But Doloreth
showed me the letter you wrote her, and--well--here I am, ready to help
you, with two men and a thpare horthe waiting outside the woodth on the
blind trail."

"You--_you_--here?" she only repeated.

--Curson shrugged his shoulders. "Yeth. Of courth you never expected to
thee me again, and leatht of all _here_. I'll admit that; I'll thay I
wouldn't if I'd been in your plathe. I'll go further, and thay you
didn't want to thee me again--anywhere. But it all cometh to the thame
thing; here I am; I read the letter you wrote Doloreth. I read how you
were hiding here, under Dunn'th very nothe, with his whole pothe out,
cavorting round and barkin' up the wrong tree. I made up my mind to
come down here with a few nathty friends of mine and cut you out under
Dunn'th nothe, and run you over into Yuba--that 'th all."

"How dared she show you my letter--_you_ of all men? How dared she ask
_your_ help?" continued Teresa, fiercely.

"But she didn't athk my help," he responded coolly. "D----d if I don't
think she jutht calculated I'd be glad to know you were being hunted
down and thtarving, that I might put Dunn on your track."

"You lie!" said Teresa, furiously; "she was my friend. A better friend
than those who professed--_more_, she added, with a contemptuous
drawing away of her skirt as if she feared Curson's contamination.

"All right. Thettle that with her when you go back," continued Curson
philosophically. "We can talk of that on the way. The thing now ith to
get up and get out of thethe woods. Come!"

Teresa's only reply was a gesture of scorn.

"I know all that," continued C