ing.

All reason and sane caution warned her to ride on and leave that camp
unmolested, but an overwhelming, tingling curiosity besieged her. The
thin column of smoke rose past the dark trees like a ghost, and
reaching the unsheltered space above the trees, was smitten by a light
wind and jerked away at a sharp angle.

She looked closer and saw a bed made of a great heap of the tips of
limbs of spruce, a bed softer than down and more fragrant than any
manufactured perfume, however costly.

Possibly it was the sight of this bed which tempted her down from the
saddle, at last. With the reins over her arm, she stood close to the
fire and warmed her hands, peering all the while on every side, like
some wild and beautiful creature tempted by the bait of the trap, but
shrinking from the scent of man.

As she stood there a broad, yellow moon edged its way above the hills
and rolled up through the black trees and then floated through the sky.
Beneath such a moon no harm could come to her. It was while she stared
at it, letting her tensed alertness relax little by little, that she
saw, or thought she saw, a hint of moving white pass over the top of
the rise of ground and disappear among the trees.

She could not be sure, but her first impulse was to gather the reins
with a jerk and place her foot in the stirrup; but then she looked back
and saw the fire, burning low now and asking like a human voice to be
replenished from the heap of small, broken fuel near by; and she saw
also the softly piled bed of evergreens.

She removed her foot from the stirrup. What mattered that imaginary
figure of moving white? She felt a strong power of protection lying
all about her, breathing out to her with the keen scent of the pines,
fanning her face with the chill of the night breeze. She was alone,
but she was secure in the wilderness.

CHAPTER XXIX

JACK

For many a minute she waited by that camp-fire, but there was never a
sign of the builder of it, though she centered all her will in making
her eyes and ears sharper to pierce through the darkness and to gather
from the thousand obscure whispers of the forest any sounds of human
origin. So she grew bold at length to take off the pack and the
saddles; the camp was hers, built for her coming by the invisible power
which surrounded her, which read her mind, it seemed, and chose
beforehand the certain route which she must follow.

She resigned herself to that force witho