"Oh no, it is true enough." She took a deep, lingering breath and released it in a sigh. "But the man that brought the news about Tobe told me something else--something that everybody in the neighborhood seems to know. Charlie, the sheriff has sent those men back to watch you again. They were seen hiding in the woods on the hillside. They are watching us even now. I thought that was all off, but they say the sheriff has had fresh instructions from the East. The men he is after are hiding somewhere in this part of the state, and he seems to think they are here in the mountains and that Tobe Keith and you know something about them." Charles looked toward the hillside indicated, and then drew his lingering eyes back to hers. He was slightly pale; his lips were drawn tight in chagrin. He made a failure of a smile of indifference. "I thought that was over," he said. "I thought the sheriff had turned his attention elsewhere. But it can't be helped. You ought not to have taken me in. I ought not to have stopped here at all." "Don't talk that way!" Mary commanded, with desperate warmth. "What are we going to do about it? I want the truth. I know you are bound by honor, as you say, but as far as you are able I want you to tell me what to expect. If he arrests you--well, what then?" Charles dropped his eyes to the soil his hoe had turned up and the weeds he had cut. His fine face was stamped with the misery that permeated his being like an absorbent fluid. "If he arrests me he will want me to do the impossible," he said. "He will want me to show who and what I am. I've tried to tell you that I have no past that I can bring up even--even to stand well in your sight. I shall say nothing to him. I don't think the law would let him torture me bodily, but my silence will be ground enough to confirm his suspicions. A man who has been the daily associate of a bunch of circus crooks, and who refuses to show his record to an officer of the law, will stand a poor show." "I wonder--couldn't you escape? But, oh, I don't want you to leave! I couldn't bear that." "I thought of escape when they were hanging round before," he answered, with a pale, frank smile, "but gave it up. Such men would be hard to get away from, now that they are on guard, and, besides, to try it would be a confession that I am guilty of what they charge. No, I'll have to let them have their way about it. The men they are after are a dangerous lot and ought to be apprehended." "Listen to me, Charlie," and Mary, in her earnestness, put her hand on his arm. "I know _something_--a little something--of all this, and you need not deny it. You are trying to protect some one else in some way. I know it; I feel it; I've been sure of it for some time."