always under protest from Bella and Pete. It was a bare rock exposed
to half the world and all the eyes of Heaven; and for a man in hiding,
a man who lived, yet whose name was carved above a grave, it was a
very target for untoward accident. Some trader or trapper down in
the forest might look up and behold the misshapen figure black and
bold, against the sky. Yet there was never so mighty a Hugh as when
he stood there defiant and alone. Now he wanted Sylvie to sense that
tragic magnificence.

So they went out, Hugh's arm about her, as strange a pair of lovers
as ever tempted the spring--the great, scarred, uncouth, gray cripple
and the slim, unseeing girl, groping and clinging, absolutely shut
off from any contact with reality as long as this man should interpret
creation for her. Sylvie turned back to wave at Pete, whom they had
left standing in the doorway.

"I'll be hunting for you if you stay out late," he called--to which
Hugh shouted back: "You hunting for us! Don't fancy I can't take care
of this child, myself."

"Both of them blind!" Pete muttered to himself in answer.

They were moving rather slowly across the rough, sagebrush-covered
flat, and presently Hugh led Sylvie into the fragrant silence of the
forest trail. To her it was all scent and sound. Hugh whispered to
her what this drumming meant and that chattering and that sudden
rattle almost under their feet.

They had to go slowly, Sylvie touching the trees here and there, along
her side of the trail. He lifted her over logs and fallen trees, and