There were five days of terrific storm. Truedale and Nella-Rose had fought to save White's live stock--even his cabin itself; for the deluge had attacked that while leaving safe the smaller cabin near by. All one morning they had worked gathering debris and placing it so that it turned the course of a rapid stream that threatened the larger house. It had been almost a lost hope, but as the day wore on the torrent lessened, the rough barrier held--they were successful! The gate and snake-fence were carried away, but the rest was saved! In the strenuous labour, in the dangerous isolation, the ordinary things of life lost their importance. With death facing them their love and companionship were all that were left to them and neither counted the cost. But on the sixth day the sun shone, the flood was past, and with safety and the sure coming of Jim White at hand, they sat confronting each other in a silence new and potent. "Sweetheart, you must go--for a few hours!" Truedale bent across the table that separated them and took her clasped hands in his. He had burned all his social bridges, but poor Nella-Rose's progress through life had not been made over anything so substantial as bridges. She had proceeded by scrambling down and up primitive obstacles; she felt that at last she had come to her Land of Promise. "You are going to send me--away? Where?" "Only until White returns, little girl. See here, dear, you and I are quite gloriously mad, but others are stupidly sane and we've got to think of them." Truedale was talking over her head, but already Nella-Rose accepted this as a phase of their new relations. A mountain man might still love his woman even if he beat her and, while Nella-Rose would have scorned the suggestion that she was a mountain woman, she did seriously believe that men were different from women and that was the end of the matter! "You run along, small girl of mine--the skies are clear, the sun warm--but I want you to meet me at three o'clock at the spot where the trail joins the road. I will be there and I will wait for you." "But why?--why?" The blue-gray eyes were troubled. "Sweetheart, we're going to find that minister of yours if we have to travel from one end of the hills to the other!" "But we-all are married!" This with a little gasp. "Back on the hill, when you told God and said He understood; then we-all were married." "And so we were, my sweet, no minister could make you more mine than you already are, but the others--your people. Should they try to separate us they might cause trouble and the minister can make it impossible for any one to take you away from my love and care."