"No. He knew that I would be there. I might have finished him without giving him a chance to speak, girl, but I'd seen him with you and I was curious. So I found out where you were going and why, and let Wilbur go. I came back and looked at you and found you asleep." She grew cold at the thought of him leaning over her. "I watched you a long time, and I suppose I'll remember you always as I saw you then. You were very beautiful with the shadow of your lashes against your cheek--almost as beautiful as you are now as you stand over there, fearing and loathing me. I dared not let you see me, but I decided to take care of you--for a while." "And now?" "I have come to say farewell to you." "Let me see you once before you go." "No! You see, I fear you even more than you fear me." "Then I'll follow you." "It would be useless--utterly useless. There are ways of becoming invisible in the mountains. But before I go, tell me one thing: Have you left the cabin to search for Pierre le Rouge in another place?" "No. I do not search for him." There was an instant of pause. Then the voice said sharply: "Did Wilbur lie to me?" "No. I started up the valley to find him." "But you've given him up?" "I hate him--I hate him as much as I loathe myself for ever condescending to follow him." She heard a quick breath drawn in the dark, and then a murmur: "I am free, then, to hunt him down!" "Why?" "Listen: I had given him up for your sake; I gave him up when I stood beside you that first night and watched you trembling with the cold in your sleep. It was a weak thing for me to do, but since I saw you, Mary, I am not as strong as I once was." "Now you go back on his trail? It is death for Pierre?" "You say you hate him?" "Ah, but as deeply as that?" she questioned herself. "It may not be death for Pierre. I have ridden the ranges many years and met them all in time, but never one like him. Listen: six years ago I met him first and then he wounded me--the first time any man has touched me. And afterward I was afraid, Mary, for the first time in my life, for the charm was broken. For six years I could not return, but now I am at his heels. Six are gone; he will be the last to go." "What are you?" she cried. "Some bloodhound reincarnated?" He said: "That is the mildest name I have ever been called." CHAPTER 36 "Give up the trail of Pierre." And there, brought face to face with the mortal question, even her fear burned low in her, and once more she remembered the youth who would not leave her in the snow, but held her in his arms with the strange cross above them. She said simply: "I still love him." A faint glimmer came to her through the dark and she could see deeper into the shrubbery, for now the moon stood up on the top of the great peak above them and flung a faint light into the hollow. That glimmer she saw, but no face of a man. And then the silence held; every second of it was more than a hundred spoken words.