"Gone?" she exclaimed, with raised eyebrows. "How do you know?"
"He came to my camp at dawn," said Ambrose. Honesty compelling him, he added with a touch of defiance; "I gave him my dugout."
Colina shrank from him.
"You helped him get away!" she cried.
"I didn't know what had happened," he said indignantly.
"Of course not!" said Colina, with quick penitence.
But she did not return to him. Presently the frown came back; she began to breathe quickly. "You saw the skin; you must have talked with him. You took his part against father!"
Ambrose had nothing to say. He could have groaned aloud in his helplessness to avert the catastrophe that he saw coming.
It was as if a horrible, black-shrouded shape had stepped between him and Colina.
She, too, was aware of it. For an age-long moment they stared at each other with a kind of chilled terror.