"And you will take me away? You promise?"
"My dear child, that is just what I came for," he said, feigning to be surprised at her questions. "Fifteen hundred miles for just that. Now don't you believe all that I've told you about the picture?"
"Yes," she nodded.
She had drawn back, and was looking at him so steadily and with such wondering depths in her eyes that he found himself compelled for an instant to turn his own gaze carelessly away.
"And you used to talk to it," she said, "and it seemed alive?"
"Very much alive, Marge."
"And you dreamed about me?"
He had said that, and he felt again that warm rise of blood. He felt himself in a difficult place. If she had been older, or even younger....
"Yes," he said truthfully.
He feared one other question was quite uncomfortably near. But it didn't come. The girl rose suddenly to her feet, flung back her hair, and ran to Tara, dozing in the sun. What she was saying to the beast, with her arms about his shaggy neck, David could only guess. He found himself laughing again, quietly of course, with his back to her, as he picked up their dinner things. He had not anticipated such an experience as this. It rather unsettled him. It was amusing—and had a decided thrill to it. Undoubtedly Hauck and Brokaw were rough men; from what she had told him he was convinced they were lawless men, engaged in a very wide "underground" trade in whisky. But he believed that he would not find them as bad as he had pictured them at first, even though the Nest was a horrible place for the girl. Her running away was the most natural thing in the world—for her. She was an amazingly spontaneous little creature, full of courage and a fierce determination to fight some one, but probably to-day or to-morrow she would have been forced to turn homeward, quite exhausted with her adventure, and nibbling roots along with Tara to keep herself alive. The thought of her hunger and of the dire necessity in which he had found her, drove the smile from his lips. He was finishing his pack when she left the bear and came to him.