stirrups. Starting to mount, the man stopped with one foot in the
stirrup and raised his eyes towards her so suddenly that she
shrank back again with a quicker throbbing at her heart and
pressed closer to the earth. Still, seen or not seen, flight was
easy for her, so she could not forbear to look again. Apparently,
he had seen nothing--only that the next turn of the trail was too
steep to ride, and so he started walking again, and his walk, as
he strode along the path, was new to her, as was the erect way
with which he held his head and his shoulders.

In her wonder over him, she almost forgot herself, forgot to
wonder where he was going and why he was coming into those lonely
hills until, as his horse turned a bend of the trail, she saw
hanging from the other side of the saddle something that looked
like a gun. He was a "raider"--that man: so, cautiously and
swiftly then, she pushed herself back from the edge of the cliff,
sprang to her feet, dashed past the big tree and, winged with
fear, sped down the mountain--leaving in a spot of sunlight at the
base of the pine the print of one bare foot in the black earth.




II


He had seen the big pine when he first came to those hills--one
morning, at daybreak, when the valley was a sea of mist that threw
soft clinging spray to the very mountain tops: for even above the
mists, that morning, its mighty head arose--sole visible proof