seat.

"The ---- coward!" thought Wickersham. "He is running."

The next second there was a report of a pistol close beside the stage,
and the man in the road at the horses' heads fired again. Another
report, and Keith dashed forward into the light of the lantern and
charged straight at the robber, who fired once more, and then, when
Keith was within ten feet of him, turned and sprang over the edge of the
road into the thick bushes below. Keith sprang straight after him, and
the two went crashing through the underbrush, down the steep side of
the hill.

The inmates of the stage poured out into the road, all talking together,
and Wickersham, with the aid of Jake Dennison, succeeded in quieting the
horses. The noise of the flight and the pursuit had now grown more
distant, but once more several shots were heard, deep down in the woods,
and then even they ceased.

It had all happened so quickly that the passengers had seen nothing.
They demanded of Wickersham how many robbers there were. They were
divided in their opinion as to the probable outcome. The men declared
that Keith had probably got the robber if he had not been killed himself
at the last fire.

Terpsichore was in a passion of rage because the men had not jumped out
instantly to Keith's rescue, and one of them had held her in the stage
and prevented her from poking her head out to see the fight. In the
light of the lantern Wickersham observed that she was handsome. He
watched her with interest. There was something of the tiger in her lithe
movement. She declared that she was going down into the woods herself to
find Keith. She was sure he had been killed.

The men protested against this, and Jake Dennison and another man
started to the rescue, whilst a grizzled, weather-beaten fellow caught
and held her.

"Why, my darlint, I couldn't let you go down there. Why, you'd ruin your
new bonnet," he said.

The young woman snatched the bonnet from her head and slung it in his
face.

"You coward! Do you think I care for a bonnet when the best man in
Gumbolt may be dying down in them woods?"

With a cuff on the ear as the man burst out laughing and put his hand on
her to soothe her, she turned and darted over the bank into the woods.
Fortunately for the rest of her apparel, which must have suffered as
much as the dishevelled bonnet,--which the grizzled miner had picked up
and now held in his hand as carefully as if it were one of the birds
which ornamented