bridge was across at midnight. The boys have been working night and day
to get you out, and this is the way you act, hiding up there in that
cabin like you'd as lief stay there as not."

"Yes, Pearl, why weren't you down to meet us?" Bob Flick spoke for the
first time, his slow, soft voice was placating and yet it was evident
that his sympathies were with Gallito. "The boys had the place all lit
up with torches while they worked, and your Pop and I waited half the
night for you down here. Why didn't you come?" Neither of the men had so
far even glanced at Seagreave, but ignored him as thoroughly as if he
were not there.

Pearl looked at Flick a moment in frowning incomprehension. Petted,
spoiled child that she was, she could not bear to be scolded where she
had expected a rapturous welcome. From Flick to her father she glanced,
and then back again. "What's the matter with you two?" she cried. "Are
you mad just because I didn't come chasing down the hill in the dead of
night? How did I know that the boys were going to get the bridge across
at midnight?"

"Because, if you'd been the sort of girl you ought to be, you wouldn't
have stayed a minute longer in that cabin than you could have helped.
You'd have stood down by the gully all night long just to show the folks
in the camp that you wouldn't stay in that cabin after there was any
chance at all for you to get away," Gallito answered her before Bob
Flick got a chance. "What made you stay up there? You and him, too," he
pointed one, long, gnarled forefinger at Seagreave, "have got to answer
me that question. And there's another one, too, and you'll answer it."

Again Pearl stared at him, and again she turned her puzzled eyes on Bob