He looked and saw the three men walking slowly up the pipe-line which drained the barrel-spring. They were too far away to be recognizable to him, and since they were stopping momently to examine the pipe, there was good hope of an escape unseen. Tom waited breathless for the propitious instant when the tapping of the pipe-men's hammers should drown the noise of a dash for effacement. When it came, he flung himself backward, whipped Nan over his head and out of the line of sight as if she had been feather-light, and rolled swiftly after her. Before she could rise he had picked her up and was dragging her to the climbing point under the lip of the boulder cave. "Up with you!" he commanded, making a step of his hand. "Give me your foot and then climb to my shoulder--quick!" But she drew back. "Oh, I can't!" she gasped. "I--I'm too skeered!" Tom's brows went together in the Gordon frown. Bone-meltings and blood-firings apart, he was neither a fool nor a dastard, and he was older now than on that day when the storm had driven them to take refuge in the heart of the great rock. And since he had decided that the cavern was only big enough for one, he had meant to put Nan up, going himself to meet the intruders to make sure that they should not discover her. But her trembling fit--a new and curious thing in the girl who used to make his flesh creep with her reckless daring--spoiled the plan. "Can't you climb up?" he demanded. She shook her head despairingly, and he lost no time in trying to persuade her. Jumping to catch the lip of the cavern's mouth, he ascended cat-like, and a moment later he had drawn her up after him. "I'd like to know what got the matter with you all at once," he said severely, when they were crowded together in the narrow rock cell; and then, without waiting for her answer: "You stay here while I drop down and keep those fellows away from this side of things." But it was too late. The men were already at the barrel-spring, as an indistinct murmur of voices testified. The girl had another trembling fit when she heard them, and Tom's wonder was fast lapsing into contempt or something like it. "Oh-h-h!" she shuddered. "Do you reckon they saw us, Tom-Jeff?" "I shouldn't wonder," he whispered back unfeelingly. "We could see them plain enough." "He'll kill me, for shore, Tom-Jeff! O God!" Tom's lip curled. The wolf does not mate with the jackal. Not all her beauty could atone for such spiritless cringing. Love would have pitied her, but passion is not moved by qualities opposite to those which have evoked it. "Then you know them--or one of them, at least," he said. "Who is he?" She would not tell; and since the murmur of voices was still plainly audible, she begged in dumb-show for silence. Whereupon Tom shut his mouth and did not open it again until the sound of the voices had died away and the fainter tappings of the hammers on the pipe-line advertised the retreat of the inspection party.