shall be set free, eh?"

"Surely? But what will you do then? Where will you go?"

"I hope Helen will return to her people." He sighed deeply. "It was all
very foolish to come out here. But it was natural. She was stricken, and
sensitive--so morbidly sensitive--to pity, to gossip. Then, too, a
romantic notion about the healing power of the mountains was in her
thought. She wished to go where no one knew her--where she could live
the simple life and regain serenity and health. She said: 'I will not go
to a convent. I will make a sanctuary of the green hills.'"

"Something very sorrowful must have happened--" said Hanscom,
hesitatingly.

The old man's voice was very grave as he replied: "Not sorrow, but
treachery," he said. "A treachery so cruel, a betrayal so complete, that
when she lost her lover and her most intimate girl friend (one nearer
than a sister) she lost faith in all men and all women--almost in God. I
cannot tell you more of her story--" He paused a moment, then added:
"She believes in you--she already trusts you--and some time, perhaps,
she herself will tell the story of her betrayal. Till then you must be
content with this--she is here through no fault or weakness of her own."

The ranger, pondering deeply, dared not put into definite form the
precise disloyalty which had driven a broken-hearted girl to seek the
shelter of the hills, but he understood her mood. Hating her kind and
believing that she could lose herself in the immensity of the landscape,
she had come to the mountains only to be cruelly disillusioned. The
Kitsongs had taught her that in the wilderness a woman is more
noticeable than a peak.

Just why she selected the Shellfish for her retreat remained to be
explained, and to this question Kauffman answered: "We came here because
a friend of ours, a poet, who had once camped in the valley, told us of
the wonderful beauty of the place. It is beautiful--quite as beautiful
as it was reported--but a beautiful landscape, it appears, does not make
men over into its image. It makes them seem only the more savage."

Hanscom, refraining from further question, helped the old man up the
stairway to his bed and then returned to the barroom, in which several
of the regular boarders were loafing. One or two greeted him familiarly,
and it was evident that they all knew something of the capture and were
curious to learn more. His answers to their questions were brief:
"You'll learn all about it to-morr