They left the ranch that day, and for a week Brooke led them through dark fir forests, and waited on them in their camps. He would also have stayed with them longer could he have found a reasonable excuse, but, as it happened, a most exemplary Siwash whom he knew appeared, and offered his services, when they reached the lonely mountain-girt lake. Then he said farewell to Major Hume, and was plodding down the homeward trail with his packs slung about him, when he met the girl coming up from the lake. She carried a cluster of the crimson wine-berries in her hand, and stopped abruptly when she saw him. She and her younger companions had been fishing that afternoon, and though Brooke could not see the latter amidst the serried trunks, their voices broke sharply through the stillness of the evening. It was significant that both[Pg 30] he and the girl stood still without speaking until the voices grew less distinct. [Pg 30] Then she said, quietly, "So you are going away?" "Yes," said Brooke, a trifle grimly. "An Indian I can recommend came in this afternoon. That made it unnecessary for me to stay." "You seem in a hurry to go." Brooke made a little gesture. "I fancy I have stayed with Major Hume quite as long as is good for me. The effort it cost me to go away was sufficiently unpleasant already. It is, you see, scarcely likely that I shall ever spend a week like the past one again." There was sympathy in his companion's eyes, for she had seen his comfortless dwelling, and guessed tolerably correctly what manner of life he led. It would, she realized, have been easier for him had he been born a bushman, for there was no doubt in her mind that he was one who had been accustomed to luxury in England. "You are going back to the ranch?" she said. "For a little while, and then I shall take the trail. Where it will lead me is more than I know, but the ranch is as great a failure as its owner. And yet a month—or even a week—ago I was dangerously content to stay there." The girl fancied she understood him, for she had seen broken men who had lost heart in the struggle sink to the Indian's level, and ask no more than the[Pg 31] subsistence they could gain with rod and gun. That was, perhaps, enough for an Indian, but it seemed to her a flinging of his birthright away in the case of a white man. Her face was quietly grave,
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