Mary was looking at Charles from sadly inquiring eyes when he caught her up a moment later. "What did you say to them?" she asked.
He told her and she forced a wan smile, while a warm glow of gratitude rose in her eyes.
"How sweet and kind of you!" she said. "You have proved yourself to be a friend, and we have known you such a short time."
"I'd give my life to help you out of this," he suddenly said, surprised at his boldness of speech and the raging storm of sympathy which had fairly forced the words from him.
"Your life?" She was close at his side, for he was holding the dripping bough of a mountain cedar aside for her to pass. "That is a strong expression. Your life? That is all one has, you know."
"My life is worthless to me and to every one else," he said, frankly, and as he uttered the words he was viewing his career in a flash-light of memory from its beginning to the present. "Yes, Miss Rowland, it is no good—absolutely no good. That's why I feel as I do for your brothers, and—I mean it—I'd give my life to-day to lift you out of this trouble and see you as I did that day in the store when you hired me."
"Hired you? Don't use that word," she suddenly cried out, and she put her hand on his arm in a gentle stroke of protest. "Mr. Brown, it seems to me—I don't know how to explain it, but it seems to me that I've known you for ages and ages. I can see that you are sad at times, and I know that you have suffered somehow, somewhere. That picture of the pretty child in your room—she is linked with your trouble, is she not?"
"Indirectly," he admitted, not seeing her drift. "Yes, it was partly on her account—for her own future—that I left home."
"I see, I see; and her mother?" Mary's voice had sunken almost to inaudibility; the cracking of the twigs under their feet all but drowned its sound. "Did you leave her with the child?"
"Oh yes! They are inseparable," he answered. He felt that he was admitting too much, and he turned the subject to that of the lessening sunlight on a cliff to their left. He thought the dense clouds massing behind them indicated a high wind and a heavy downpour of rain.