While he said this a workman came down the path. He was the sawyer at the mills. Her hands dropped and she stepped back to the seat she had left. The man looked at her and then at Forrest as he passed, turning his head slowly to prolong the stare. "I didn’t know the mill men ever came up here," she faltered. "They don’t, often." Forrest stood watching the curve where the man had disappeared. "A lighter grounded on Alki Point; he has been helping to float her. That’s what took me up the trail." He began to walk in the direction the man had gone. Presently he looked back. "I must hurry on," he said. "Come with me, if you are ready; I would be glad to help you down." She followed him in silence along the promontory. When they passed beyond the curve another man pushed out of the thicket into the trail. He ran with a gliding, half writhing motion to a point where a branch track, faint, little used, dipped over the Head. He took this course, twisting, swinging himself by low boughs, doubling where the path was lost in a precipitous gully, and so gained the beach. He crept under the bluff, rounding it and splashing ankle-deep in water, for the tide was running in, until he reached the rear balcony of the old hotel. He paused a moment, listening, with his beady eyes fixed on the walk stretching from the main entrance; then he laid the saddle-bags which he carried on the platform while he swung himself up. He waited another instant,—the sea broke with a gurgle among the piles; a passing gust set one of the doors creaking,—and picking up the empty bags he ran through the tap-room behind the bar. He found a key, strung on a cord around his neck, and fitted it in the new lock and opened the door. When he came out the saddle-bags were filled, and heavy, for he made his way up the promontory with difficulty. As he reached the summit the stillness was again broken by the neigh of a horse. Forrest heard the sound faintly, while he helped Louise down the last pitch of the trail. But again he gave it little attention, for he noticed that the sawyer was the center of a small crowd at the corner of the cookhouse. The whole group turned to look at these two as they approached; curiously, as though they were strangers but just arrived. She raised her face to Forrest with a mute question. He felt it, though his own gaze was directed straight ahead to the quiet harbor. The right hand at his side clenched, twice, and the line deepened to a great cleft between his brows. But he knew this crew and the futility of trying to put their rough conjectures down. To call the sawyer to account was to invite a wider notoriety, such as this woman could not endure. "I have been a fool," he told himself; "a blind fool. My God, the shame, the folly of it. And the most I can do is to keep it from her."