Stiffly the ranger got to his knees and was about to rise when a sound stopped him. Something was panting in deep breaths at the other side of the cell. A shiver of terror went goose-quilling down O’Connor’s back. Had they locked him up with some wild beast, to be torn to pieces? Or was this the ghost of some previous occupant? In such blackness of gloom it was easy to believe, or, at least, to imagine impossible conceptions that the light of day would have scattered in an instant. He was afraid—afraid to the marrow. And then out of the darkness came a small, trembling voice: “Are you a prisoner, too, sir?” Bucky wanted to shout aloud his relief—and his delight. The sheer joy of his laughter told him how badly he had been frightened. That voice—were he sunk in twice as deep and dark an inferno—he would know it among a thousand. He groped his way forward toward it. “Oh, little pardner, I’m plumb tickled to death you ain’t a ghost,” he laughed. “It is—Bucky?” The question joyfully answered itself. “Right guess. Bucky it is.” He had hold of her hands by this time, was trying to peer down into the happy-brown eyes he knew were scanning him. “I can’t see you yet, Curly Haid, but it’s sure you, I reckon. I’ll have to pass my hand over your face the way a blind man does,” he laughed, and, greatly daring, he followed his own suggestion, and let his fingers wander across her crisp, thick hair, down her soft, warm cheeks, and over the saucy nose and laughing mouth he had often longed to kiss. Presently she drew away shyly, but the lilt of happiness in her voice told him she was not offended. “I can see you, Bucky.” The last word came as usual, with that sweet, hesitating, upward inflection that made her familiarity wholly intoxicating, even while the comradeship of it left room for an interpretation either of gay mockery or something deeper. “Yes, I can see you. That’s because I have been here longer and am more used to the darkness. I think I’ve been here about a year.” He felt her shudder. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.” “No gladder than I am to feel you,” he answered gayly. “It’s worth the price of admission to find you here, girl o’mine.” He had forgotten the pretense that still lay between them, so far as words went when they had last parted. Nor did it yet occur to him that he had swept aside the convention of her being a boy. But she was vividly aware of it, and aware, too, of the demand his last words had made for a recognition of the relationship that existed in feeling between them. “I knew you knew I was a girl,” she murmured. “You knew more than that,” he challenged joyfully. But, in woman’s way, she ignored his frontal attack. He was going at too impetuous a speed for her reluctance. “How long have you known that I wasn’t a boy—not from the first, surely?”