She bent forward, looking at the lantern as if drawn by the blaze, her great eyes bright as a deer's when it stands fascinated by a torchlight a moment before bounding away. "Swan forgets, Swan forgets!" she murmured, her staring eyes on the light. She rocked herself from side to side, and "Swan forgets, Swan forgets!" she murmured, like the burden of a lullaby. "Where is your camp?" Mackenzie asked her, thinking he must take her home. Hertha did not reply. For a long time she sat leaning, staring at the lantern. One of the dogs approached her, bristles raised in fear, creeping with stealthy movement, feet lifted high, stretched its neck to sniff her, fearfully, backed away, and composed itself to rest. But now and again it lifted its head to sniff the scent that came from this strange being, and which it could not analyze for good or ill. Mackenzie marked its troubled perplexity, almost as much at sea in his own reckoning of her as the dog. "No, I could not show you the money and go away with you leaving Swan living behind," she said at last, as if she had decided it finally in her mind. "That I have told Earl Reid. Swan would follow me to the edge of the world; he would strangle my neck between his hands and throw me down dead at his feet." "He'd have a right to if you did him that kind of a trick," Mackenzie said. "Earl Reid comes with promises," she said, unmindful of Mackenzie; "he sits close by me in the dark, he holds me by the hand. But kiss me I will not permit; that yet belongs to Swan." She looked up, sweeping Mackenzie with her appealing eyes. "But if you would kill him, then my lips would be hot for your kiss, brave man--I would bend down and draw your soul into mine through a long, long kiss!" "Hush!" Mackenzie commanded, sternly. "Such thoughts belong to Swan, as much as the other. Don't talk that way to me--I don't want to hear any more of it." Hertha sat looking at him, that cast of dull hopelessness in her face again, the light dead in her eyes. "There are strange noises that I hear in the night," she said, woefully; "there is a dead child that never drew breath pressed against my heart." "You'd better go back to your wagon," he suggested, getting to his feet. "There is no wagon, only a canvas spread over the brushes, where I lie like a wolf in a hollow. A beast I am become, among the beasts of the field!" "Come--I'll go with you," he offered, holding out his hand to lift her. She did not seem to notice him, but sat stroking her face as if to ease a pain out of it, or open the fount of her tears which much weeping must have drained long, long ago. Mackenzie believed she was going insane, in the slow-preying, brooding way of those who are not strong enough to withstand the cruelties of silence and loneliness on the range. "Where is your woman?" she asked again, lifting her face suddenly. "I have no woman," he told her, gently, in great pity for her cruel burden under which she was so unmistakably breaking.