He crushed her against his pounding heart. He ached with the joy of it. But with the relief from the heavy burden of fear which had for so long weighed him down, nature asserted herself and forced down his leaden eyelids. She felt him sinking in her arms and freed herself. With her hands upon his shoulders she drew back and looked hungrily at him. His sandy hair was tangled and frowsy, his eyes shot with tiny threads of red, his cheeks bronzed and covered with a shaggy light beard. His clothes were tattered, and about his waist there dangled a circle of leather bags. He was an odd enough looking figure. By some strange chance she had never seen him in other than some uncouth garb; drenched with rain, draped in an Oriental lounging robe, with a cartridge belt about his waist, and covered with sweat and powder grime, and now in this.
Both were brought back to the world about them by a shot from Stubbs. He had fired at the Priest and missed. It was as though the man led a charmed life. The girl raised her hand as Stubbs was about to fire again.
“Don’t! Don’t! You are making a terrible mistake. This isn’t the Priest––he is my father.”
The phrase awoke even the sleeping sense of these men.
“Your father!” exclaimed Wilson.
But the man was coming towards them––steadily, and yet as if in a sort of daze.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
The eyes, the high cheek-bones, the thin lips, were those of the Priest, but the voice was different. It had lost something of its harshness––something, too, of its decisiveness. The girl interrupted,
“This is no time for explanations. Come into the hut. We must rest first.”