"Oh, Mr. Baron," she cried, with sudden courage, "Ah'd like to take care of her, she's so little an' pretty. Ah don' min' hit a bit, Bud; truly Ah'm honin' to," in unconscious confession of her previous timidity. "You-all go long back with Bud, Mr. Baron, 'n Ah'll make her comfortable. Will ye have yo' trunk in here, ma'am?"
To Hilda's answer, "Yes, if you please," in faltering English, Melissa cried, in ecstasy,—
"Don' she speak pretty! Now, Bud, you tote in the lady's trunk, 'n then go. She's tired." And the usually timid country girl entered into her new rôle of care-taker with extraordinary zest.
Friedrich approached his sister-in-law.
"Good-night," he said. "You will be quite safe. Have no fear."
She held out her hand to him. He hesitated a moment, and then took it in a brief clasp.
"Good-night," was all she said.
Declining Bud's offer of shelter, von Rittenheim bade him farewell, and strode into the darkness of the forest. Yarebrough looked after him, puzzled and disapproving.
"He ain' none so glad to see his sister-in-law," he pondered. "Ah wonner what hit all means."
Friedrich took no heed of his way beyond a numb feeling of pleasure when it grew steeper and rougher. He had left the trail long since, but he was stayed by no obstacle, was arrested by no barrier of Nature's make. A lizard asleep on a tiny ledge of rock, jutting from a cliff, scuttled away in fright as a man in sudden onslaught scaled its face. A pair of cotton-tails bobbed from one thicket to another in wildest terror as he came breaking through. A trout, floating in a rocky basin of the brook, fled with a dexterous flip of fin and tail to the protecting shelter of an overhanging root, as the placid pool was agitated by the passage of an enemy, following the course of the stream as the path of least resistance.