He clapped the covers together and put the volume in his pocket. “It’s mine! I’ll read every word of it, if it takes an age, and here’s my hand on it.”
She gave him her hand, and in this clasp something came to her from his clutching fingers which sobered her. She drew her hand away hastily and said: “If you read that book—and think about it—it will change your whole world.”
He, too, lost his brightness. “Well, I’m not so anxious to keep up this kind of life. But if anybody changes me it will be you.”
“Hush!” she warned with lifted finger.
He fell back, and after a little silence went out to wait upon the fire.
“It seems to me,” said Peggy, reprovingly, “that you’re too gracious with this mountaineer; he’s getting presumptuous.”
“He doesn’t mean to be. It’s his unsophisticated way. Anyhow, we can’t afford to be captious to our host.”
“That’s true,” admitted Peggy.
The night shut down with the snow still falling, but with a growing chill in the air.
“The flakes are finer,” the outlaw announced, as he came in a little later. “That is a good sign. It is growing colder and the wind is changing. It will pinch hard before sun-up, and the worst of it, there’s no way to warm this cabin. We can’t have the door open to-night. I’m worried about you,” he said to Alice. “If only those chumps had left a man-size ax!”