For an instant the two stood staring at each other, their hearts throbbing with an emotion they were ashamed to call joy. Clif saw the girl's slender figure trembling.
And he sprang forward and caught her in his arms just as she fainted dead away.
CHAPTER XX.
AN UNEXPECTED PERIL.
How the long hours between then and sunrise passed away those two hardly knew. Bessie Stuart, exhausted by her long nervous strain, sank into a restless slumber. And Clif sat with his eyes fixed on the gradually lightening doorway.
Clif wanted to feel happy, but he scarcely dared. For he had before his mind the thought of that lonely Spanish officer, waiting somewhere in the distance to see them depart and leave him to his fate.
It was a solemn thought, and it made Clif tremble. He almost wished that the man had not rescued him.
But then again he thought of Ignacio and his frenzied cruelty, and he felt that he would have died himself to save any man from such a fate as that.