"Is a girl more so than a man?" she asked smilingly.
Stormont smiled too, then became grave.
"Who else was here with you?" he asked quietly.
She seemed surprised. "Did you see anybody else?"
He hesitated, flushed, pointed down at the wet sphagnum. Smith's foot-prints were there in damning contrast to her own. Worse than that, Smith's pipe lay on an embedded log, and a rubber tobacco pouch beside it.
She said with a slight catch in her breath: "It seems that somebody has been here. … Some hunter, perhaps, — or a game warden. …"
"Or Hal Smith," said Stormont.
A painful colour swept the girl's face and throat. The man, sorry for her, looked away.
After a silence: "I know something about you," he said gently. "And now that I've seen you — heard you speak — met your eyes — I know enough about you to form an opinion. … So I don't ask you to turn informer. But the law won't stand for what Clinch is doing — whatever provocation he has had. And he must not aid or abet any criminal, or harbour any malefactor."
The girl's features were expressionless. The passive, sullen beauty of her troubled the trooper.