He had not intended to speak to Margaret then—for he thought she was asleep. He wished only to guard her cabin, up among the stunted old field pines—while she slept—to see the room he knew she slept in—the little window she looked out of every day.
The little cabin was a hallowed spot to him. Somehow he knew—he felt that whatever might be said—in it he knew an angel dwelt. He could not understand—he only knew.
There is a moral sense within us that is a greater teacher than either knowledge or wisdom.
For an hour he stood with his head uncovered watching the little cabin where she lived. Everything about it was sacred, because Margaret lived there. It was pretty, too, in its neatness and cleanliness, and there were old-fashioned flowers in the yard and old-fashioned roses clambered on the rock wall.
He sat down in the path—the little white sanded path down which he knew she went every day, and so made sacred by her footsteps.
“Perhaps, I am near one of them now,” he said—and he kissed the spot.
And that night and many others did the outlaw watch over the lonely cabin on the mountain side. And she, the outcast woman, slept within, unconscious that she was being protected by the man who had loved her all his life.