Speech was difficult with him, and he could only repeat: "It makes me feel like a rabbit to think I could not keep you from coming here, and the worst of it is I had nothing to offer as security. All I have in the world is a couple of horses, a saddle, and a typewriter."
"It really doesn't matter," she replied in hope of easing his mind. "See how they treat us! They know we're unjustly held and that we shall be set free to-morrow."
Strange to say, this did not lighten his gloom. "And then—you will go away," he said, soberly.
"Yes; we cannot remain here."
"And I shall never see you again," he pursued.
Her face betrayed a trace of sympathetic pain. "Don't say that! Never is such a long time."
"And you'll forget us all out here—"
"I shall never forget what you have done, be sure of that," she replied.
Nevertheless, despite the tenderness of her tone and her gratitude openly expressed, something disconcerting had come into her eyes and voice. She was more and more the lady and less and less the recluse, and as she receded and rose to this higher plane, the ranger lost heart, almost without knowing the cause of it.
At last he turned to Kauffman. "I suppose we'd better go," he said. "You look tired."