adequate means of judging. Then, besides, they were on no trail now, and
had probably gone in a most roundabout way to anywhere. In reality they
had twice come within five miles of little homesteads, tucked away beside
a stream in a fertile spot; but they had not known it. A mile further to
the right at one spot would have put them on the trail and made their way
easier and shorter, but that they could not know.

The girl did not rest long. She seemed to feel her pursuit more as the
darkness crept on, and kept anxiously looking for the moon.

"We must go toward the moon," she said as she watched the bright spot
coming in the east.

They ate their supper of fish and corn-bread with the appetite that grows
on horseback, and by the time they had started on their way again the moon
spread a path of silver before them, and they went forward feeling as if
they had known each other a long time. For a while their fears and hopes
were blended in one.

Meantime, as the sun sank and the moon rose, a traveller rode up the steep
ascent to the little lonely cabin which the girl had left. He was handsome
and dark and strong, with a scarlet kerchief knotted at his throat; and he
rode slowly, cautiously, looking furtively about and ahead of him. He was
doubly armed, and his pistols gleamed in the moonlight, while an ugly
knife nestled keenly in a secret sheath.

He was wicked, for the look upon his face was not good to see; and he was
a coward, for he started at the flutter of a night-bird hurrying late to
its home in a rock by the wayside. The mist rising from the valley in
wreaths of silver gauze startled him again as he rounded the trail to the