and a strange embarrassment held her thought.

"I--I do not know--how she is now. She _was_ pretty. Good God! how pretty
she was, and young, and kind, too. It was the kindness that mattered
most. You see, she thinks me dead; it was best so. I--I had to be dead
for a while and then I meant to go to her myself. But--something
happened. I was obliged to stay on here, and she might not have
understood. I'd like----" Farwell paused and looked pleadingly at the
white girl-face across the rude table, where the fragments of food still
lay: "I'd like you to go and see her. Boswell could take you. He's done
everything for her, God bless him! I'd--I'd like to have you tell her
gently, kindly, that I am alive. You might say it so as to spare her
shock; you might, better than any one else!"

The longing in the man's eyes was almost more than Priscilla could
endure. Crude as she was, wrong and sinful as the man near her may at one
time have been, she knew intuitively that the love for that woman in the
States had been his consuming and uplifting passion. If he had sinned for
her, he had also died for her, and now he pleaded for resurrection in her
life.

"I will do anything in all the world for you, Master Farwell; anything!"

And Priscilla stretched her hands out impulsively. Farwell took them in
his cold, thin ones and clung to her grimly.

"I'd like to know she'd welcome me!" he whispered. "Unless she could, I'd
rather stay--dead!"

Another silence fell between the man and girl while he relived the past
and she sought to enter the future.

The clock struck the half-hour of one and Farwell sprang up.

"Get ready!" he said. "No time for napping now. It is--it is Saturday
morning! We must be off! I'll go with you as far as I can. For the
rest----" He stopped suddenly and looked blankly at Priscilla.

A little after two they started away from the small, darkened house. It
was a cloudy morning; day would be long in coming, and the two made the
most of the darkness. They were well in the deep woods by six o'clock; at
seven they ate some food Farwell had hurriedly prepared, and were on
their way again by eight. They did not talk much. Priscilla found that
she needed all her strength, now that she must soon depend upon herself,
and Farwell had nothing more to say but--good-bye!

Anton Farwell had got ahead of his spy for once! Not even so
indefatigable an Indian as Pine could be expected to watch a man who had
just returned fr