"Grace—hush!"
He took her hand, kissed it, and pointed warningly toward the other sleepers.
"Speak low. I have much to say to you."
The young girl seemed to be content to devour the speaker with her eyes.
"You have come back," she whispered, with a faint smile, and a look that showed too plainly the predominance of that fact above all others in her mind. "I dreamt of you, Philip."
"Dear Grace"—he kissed her hand again. "Listen to me, darling! I have come back, but only with the old story—no signs of succour, no indications of help from without! My belief is, Grace," he added, in a voice so low as to be audible only to the quick ear to which it was addressed, "that we have blundered far south of the usual travelled trail. Nothing but a miracle or a misfortune like our own would bring another train this way. We are alone and helpless—in an unknown region that even the savage and brute have abandoned. The only aid we can calculate upon is from within—from ourselves. What that aid amounts to," he continued, turning a cynical eye towards the sleepers, "you know as well as I."
She pressed his hand, apologetically, as if accepting the reproach herself, but did not speak.
"As a party we have no strength—no discipline," he went on. "Since your father died we have had no leader. I know what you would say, Grace dear," he continued, answering the mute protest of the girl's hand, "but even if it were true—if I were capable of leading them, they would not take my counsels. Perhaps it is as well. If we kept together, the greatest peril of our situation would be ever present—the peril from ourselves!"
He looked intently at her as he spoke, but she evidently did not take his meaning. "Grace," he said, desperately, "when starving men are thrown together, they are capable of any sacrifice—of any crime, to keep the miserable life that they hold so dear just in proportion as it becomes valueless. You have read in books—Grace! good God, what is the matter?"
If she had not read his meaning in books, she might have read it at that moment in the face that was peering in at the door—a face with so much of animal suggestion in its horrible wistfulness that she needed no further revelation; a face full of inhuman ferocity and watchful eagerness, and yet a face familiar in its outlines—the face of Dumphy! Even with her danger came the swifter instinct of feminine tact and concealment, and without betraying the real cause of her momentary horror, she dropped her head upon Philip's shoulder and whispered, "I understand." When she raised her head again the face was gone.