"You are a brave little girl, Miss Meredith," the outlaw answered, resting his white, well-formed hand on the back of a chair with easy grace, while he regarded her attentively. "You make me admire you more than ever." "I am sorry for that," said Jaquelina, with spirit. "Why?" he inquired, seeming to find pleasure in the very sound of her voice, although her words were so scornful. "Is admiration so distasteful to you?" "From you it is," she said, and although he affected indifference her scornful tone had an arrow in it that secretly pierced his heart. "What manner of a man might he be whose admiration would be acceptable to you, fair lady?" he inquired, coldly, yet with a certain wistfulness in his tone. Jaquelina turned her dark eyes on the masked face of the outlaw, and regarded him steadily as she said, firmly: "A man quite your opposite in everything--an honest, honorable, noble man, brave and without reproach." "_Sans peur et sans reproche_--the Ardelle motto," muttered the outlaw beneath his dark mustache. "So, Miss Meredith, you are holding up before me a glass wherein I may see all that I am not?" "Yes," she said; then after a minute, in which she gazed at the princely form in unwilling admiration, Jaquelina added, half-pityingly: "All that you might have been!" "Yes, all that I might have been," he said, in a saddened and softened voice. "Are you a student of Whittier, Miss Meredith? Do you believe with him that "'Of all sad words of tongue or pen The saddest are these: _It might have been_'?" Jaquelina gazed in astonishment at him. A sudden sense of the strangeness of her position rushed over her. She was here alone in the outlaw's cave, and he was talking sentiment to her. She clasped her slim hands together, and the dark eyes looked at him pleadingly as she answered: "I am too young and untutored to discuss these things with you, sir, and my mind is distracted by thoughts of home. Release me, if you please. If you will only show me the outlet of the cave I will find my way home. My friends will be alarmed at my continued absence." "Do you hear the storm?" he asked. "It is pitchy dark, the rain and wind are fearful, and you are several miles from home." "It is no matter," said the girl, desperately. "Only release me, and I will find my home if I have to crawl there. I am more afraid of you and your outlaw band than I am of the night and the darkness." He looked at her thoughtfully. "Child," he said, abruptly, "you need not fear me. I would not harm a hair on that little head, and yet, if I suffered you to go free, I suppose you would at once discover our hiding-place to our enemies." Jaquelina remained perfectly silent. "Is it not true?" he inquired, coldly. She lifted her eyes and gazed at him defiantly. "You mean that you would do so?" he said, interpreting her look aright. "Yes, for it would be my duty to rid my neighborhood of such a scourge," she replied, very low.