"That's all right," she said, heartily, "I owe you that for calling old whiskers off his bronc," and she kissed him. The messenger, trembling with self-consciousness, climbed hastily through the window; ran the broad loop of the satchel up his arm; and, instead of dropping to the ground, as the girl had expected, swung himself lightly into the branches of a rather large scrub-oak that grew near. She listened to the rustle of the leaves for a moment as he neared the trunk, and then, unable longer to restrain her curiosity in regard to the doings below, turned to the stairway. As she did so, two men mounted. They examined the three rooms of the upper story hastily but carefully, paying scant attention to her, and departed swearing. In a few moments they returned for the stranger's trunk. Nell followed them down the stairs as far as the doorway. There she heard and saw things, and fled in bitter dismay to the back of the house when Billy Knapp was overpowered. At the window she knelt, clasping her hands and sinking her head between her arms. Women in the West, at least women like Nell, do not weep. But she came near it. Suddenly she raised her head. A voice next her ear had addressed her. She looked here and there and around, but could discover nothing. "Here, outside," came the low, guarded voice, "in the tree." Then she saw that the little stranger had not stirred from his first alighting-place. "Beg yore pardon, ma'am, fer startling you or fer addressing you at all, which I shouldn't, but----" "Oh, never mind that," said the girl, impatiently, shaking back her hair. So deprecating and timid were the tones, that almost without an effort of the imagination she could picture the little man's blushes and his half-sidling method of delivery. At this supreme moment his littleness and lack of self-assertion jarred on her mood. "What're you doin' there? Thought you'd vamoosed." "It was safer here," explained the stranger, "I left no trail." She nodded comprehension of the common-sense of this. "But, ma'am, I took the liberty of speakin' to you because you seems to be in trouble. Of course, I ain't got no right to _ask_, an' if you don't care to tell me----" "They're goin' to kill Billy," broke in Nell, with a sob. "What for?" "I don't jest rightly make out. They's after someone, and they thinks Billy's cacheing him. I reckon it's you. Billy ain't cacheing nothin', but they thinks he is." "It's me they's after, all right. Now, you know where I am, why don't you tell them and save Billy?" The girl started, but her keen Western mind saw the difficulty at once. "They thinks Billy pertects you jest th' same." "Do you love him?" asked the stranger. "God knows I'm purty tough," confessed Nell, sobbing, "but I jest do that!" and she dropped her head again. The invisible stranger in the gloom fell silent, considering.