shoulders and sopping her wet dress with clusters of moss.

"Go, please do--Safie, please!"

"Ah!"--she drew a quick, triumphant breath. "Then you'll come again to
see me, Mad?"

"Yes," he said slowly, and even more gravely than before.

"But you must let me show you the way out--round under those
trees--where no one can see you come." She held out her hand.

"I'll go the way I came," he said quietly, swinging himself silently
from the nearest bough into the stream. And before she could utter a
protest he was striking out as silently, hand over hand, across the
current.




CHAPTER II.


A week later Madison Wayne was seated alone in his cabin. His supper
table had just been cleared by his Chinese coolie, as it was getting
late, and the setting sun, which for half an hour had been persistently
making a vivid beacon of his windows for the benefit of wayfarers along
the river bank, had at last sunk behind the cottonwoods. His head was
resting on his hand; the book he had been reading when the light faded
was lying open on the table before him. In this attitude he became aware