“I think so; the man who brought me here rode away south.”
“And are you going to trust yourself to my care?”
She came around the table with hands extended. He took them into his grasp, looking down into her eyes.
“Yes,” she said softly, “I am going to trust you, Captain Keith.”
He laughed.
“Captain, hey? You must have been talking with that black rascal there.”
The swift color flooded her face, but her hands remained imprisoned.
“I just done tol' her who de Keiths was down in ol' Virginia, sah,” burst in Neb indignantly. “I sho' don't want nobody to think I go trapsin' 'round wid any low white trash.”
The gray eyes and the brown, gazing into one another, smiled with understanding.
“Oh, well,” Keith acknowledged, genially, “I cannot say I am sorry you know something of my past glories; if one can't have a future, it is some source of pride to have a past to remember. But now about the present. We're not much protection to any one, the way we're fixed, as we are unarmed.”