For reply, Browning lifted himself cautiously and struggled slowly to his feet. She smiled encouragingly, and stepped through the doorway, Bruce following close after her, as silently as he could. Thus he passed over the sleeping form of Sam Turner, and moved toward the outer air. He scarcely ventured to breathe till they were both outside, under the flooding moonlight. Here she took him by the hand, without speaking, and hurried him away from the cabin, into a path that led toward the hills and in the direction of the village. “Hev you a knife?” she anxiously asked, stopping when they had gained the friendly shelter of the trees. “Yes. Why?” inquired Browning, venturing to speak for the first time. “’Case, ef you hev, I’ll slip back inter that thar room with it an’ lay it open on the floor, so that when Sam Turner hev come ter himself he’ll ’low ez how you cut them ropes an’ got away ’thout anybody holping ye.” Browning took out his pocketknife, opened the biggest blade, and placed it in her hand. “I’m ’bleeged ter ye!” she said. “And I’m obliged to you, Nell—Miss Thornton!” declared Browning, with an uncommon warmth of feeling. “Likely I should have been killed if you hadn’t come to my assistance. And at such a fearful risk! I owe you my life!” She was about to turn away, but faced around abruptly and looked him squarely in the eyes. “You ain’t nary revnoo spy, air ye, come hyar ter hunt down the moonshiners?” “No!” said Browning, with sturdy emphasis. “I am not! Nor are any of my friends. I came back to your house because I was lost.” Her lips parted in a smile. “I knowed you warn’t,” she asserted. Then, before Bruce could say anything more, or even bid her good-by, she leaped away and hastened back toward the cabin. The racking pains, which Bruce had temporarily forgotten, shot again through his head and shoulder as he saw her vanish, and he turned toward the mountain with a groan. But ever, as he toiled on over the wild path, slipping, sliding, groaning, he thought of Nell Thornton, going back into that room, over the body of the slumbering rifleman, to place the pocketknife on the floor by the side of the cut ropes, and his heart throbbed in sympathy with her great peril. CHAPTER VII—BY THE WATERS OF LAKE LILY “It’s a trick to enable them to get out of the match!” asserted Ward Hammond, with a stinging sneer. “All this pretense of making a search is the veriest humbug! The idea that one of their number would wander away into the woods, or drown himself in the lake while out of his head from a little fever, is the greatest rot that any one ever tried to foist on the public.” A considerable concourse of people had gathered on the margin of Lake Lily to witness the swimming match announced to come off that morning at nine o’clock sharp. They were seated on camp stools, on wooden benches, and on the rocks and grass. The boathouse of the Lake Lily Athletic Club was filled with them.