“And I’m obliged to you, Nell—Miss Thornton!” declared Browning, with an uncommon warmth of feeling. “Likely I should have been killed if you hadn’t come to my assistance. And at such a fearful risk! I owe you my life!”
She was about to turn away, but faced around abruptly and looked him squarely in the eyes.
“You ain’t nary revnoo spy, air ye, come hyar ter hunt down the moonshiners?”
“No!” said Browning, with sturdy emphasis. “I am not! Nor are any of my friends. I came back to your house because I was lost.”
Her lips parted in a smile.
“I knowed you warn’t,” she asserted.
Then, before Bruce could say anything more, or even bid her good-by, she leaped away and hastened back toward the cabin.
The racking pains, which Bruce had temporarily forgotten, shot again through his head and shoulder as he saw her vanish, and he turned toward the mountain with a groan.
But ever, as he toiled on over the wild path, slipping, sliding, groaning, he thought of Nell Thornton, going back into that room, over the body of the slumbering rifleman, to place the pocketknife on the floor by the side of the cut ropes, and his heart throbbed in sympathy with her great peril.