He paused, and Harold waited. And his eager ears caught the faint throb of feeling in the low, almost muttered notes. "But don't forget I'm there," he went on. "I work for her--until she goes out of my charge and I'm her guide, her protector, the guardian of her happiness. That's all I care about--her happiness. I don't know whether or not I did wrong to bring a squaw man to her--but if you're man enough to hold her love and make her happy, it doesn't matter. But I give--one warning." His voice changed. It took on a quality of infinite and immutable prophecy In the darkness and the silence, the voice might have come from some higher realm, speaking the irrevocable will of the forest gods. "She'll be more or less in your power at times, up here. I won't be with you every minute. But if you take one jot of advantage of that fact--either in word or deed--I'll break you and smash you and kill you in my hands!" He waited an instant for the words to go home. Harold shivered as if with cold. And because in his mind already lay the vision of their meeting, he uttered one more sentence of instructions. He was a strong man, this son of the forest--and no man dared deny the trait--but he could not steel himself to see that first kiss. The sight of the girl, fluttering and enraptured in Harold's arms, the soft loveliness of her lips on his, was more than he could bear. "Go on in," he said. "She's waiting for you." And she was. She had waited six years, dreaming all the while of his return. Harold went in, and left his savior to the doubtful mercy of the winter forest, the darkness that had crept into his heart, and the hush that might have been the utter silence of death itself had it not been for the image of a faint, enraptured cry, the utterance of dreams come true, within the cabin door. XVI When Virginia heard the tramp of feet on her threshold she didn't dream but that Bill had returned a day earlier than he had planned. Her heart gave a queer little flutter of relief. The cabin had been lonely to-night, the silence had oppressed her; most of all she had dreaded the long night without the comforting reassurance of his presence. She wouldn't have admitted, even to herself, that her comfort was so dependent upon this man. And she sprang up, joyously as a bird springing from a bough, to welcome him. The next instant she stopped, appalled. The door did not open, the steps did not cross her threshold. Instead, knuckles rapped feebly on the door. Even in a city, it is a rather discomforting experience for a girl, alone in a home at night, to answer a tap on the door. Here in this awful silence and solitude she was simply and wholly terrified. She hadn't dreamed that there was a stranger within many miles of the cabin. For an instant she didn't know what to do. The knock sounded again.