"Oh, let me go alone, dear Uncle Clarence. My meeting with Rule should be face to face only," she replied, still trembling, but resolute.
"Are you sure you can do it?"
"Oh, yes, yes! My limbs shall no longer refuse their office!"
Clarence threw himself down at the foot of a pine tree to sit and await events.
He took out his watch and looked at the time.
"It is one o'clock," he said to himself. "At two sharp the trail will move, or ought to do so. Perhaps Neville might give us half an hour's grace, though. At any rate, I will wait here three-quarters of an hour, and if in that time I hear nothing from Rothsay or Cora, I shall go down the mountain to explain the situation to Neville."
So saying, Mr. Clarence took out his pipe, filled and lighted it, and smoked.
Corona, like a somnambulist or a blind woman, went slowly toward the log cabin, holding out her hands before her. She soon reached it, leaned for a moment against the log wall to recover her breath and her courage, and then knocked.
The door was instantly opened, and Regulas Rothsay stood on the threshold, still clothed in his hunter's suit of buckskin, but without the fur cap—the same Rule, unchanged except in habiliments and in the length of his untrimmed, tawny hair and beard.
In the instant of meeting she raised her eyes to his, and read in them the undying love of his heart.