The color flamed in her face. "I shall be late to school," she said. "Turn Sir Donald, please." She spoke to her horse, but the thicket crowded close and the chestnut continued to hold the way. "Wait, just one moment more," Stratton went on, "you do not understand. I will take you away, to the ends of the earth, if I must, and make a new start. I can do it; I can become the most rigid patriot, I swear, with you to back me. It rests completely with you, to make of me your kind of man, or to send me—I don’t care where." "I could never be any man’s prop," she answered. "I thought you knew that!" Then suddenly her manner changed. Her face softened; her eyes filled with a great appeal. "Face it out, pay the price," she said. "I will help you; only be the man of character, of force, I have believed you to be, and not—a man of straw." "Force," he caught at the word. "Force. Would you like me better if I should carry you away? I could do it, now, to-day; over the mountains, into the big Palouse wilderness. Sir Donald is very fleet,"—he watched her narrowly,—"and so is the black." "Carry me away? Carry me?" Again her manner changed. She tipped back her head, laughing in soft derision. "I know every byway northward to the British boundary and far beyond," he went on hurriedly. "Only give me the start over the divide, and the whole roused Northwest could never find you." "But you forget my part; I should find a way back." And she laughed again, less merrily, still in derision. He backed his horse a little among the alders, close to the cedar trunk, and swung himself from the saddle, moving to the chestnut’s head and thrusting his arm through the bridle. The position brought him again to the neck of the black, and he slipped the same hand on through the coil of Colonel’s lariat. "At least you are not afraid of me," he said. "I am glad of that." "Afraid? Afraid of you? Oh, no. Why should I be? But the children will be waiting." Though the words were brave her voice trembled. It was not the first time she had tried to laugh this man off dangerous ground, but now, suddenly looking into his face, for the first time, she felt he had passed beyond her influence. She was afraid. This was not the Stratton she had known; whose companionship hitherto had seemed a security on the trail; whose frequent visits to the headwaters had kept her in touch with the outside world; the friend who had once saved her from fire; whom, earlier, she had rescued from an ice-crevasse. That Stratton had been mocking, debonair; a few times she had seen him shaken with passion, but he had shown her strong under-currents of fine feeling; and, always, in any mood, he had remembered to be courteous, chivalrous; that was bred in the bone. But this man—it was as though she had not seen him before. His face was determined, hard. It might have been chiseled of rock. His silence was a threat. And, clearly, he did not mean to let her pass.