He sensed her alarm. "Don't you be scared," he said, gently. "I didn't mean to jar you. I only meant that I didn't know such women as you were in the world. I'd trust you. You've got steady eyes. You'd stick by the man that played his whole soul for you, I can see that. I come of pretty good stock. I reckon that's why you mean so much to me. You get hold of me in a way I can't explain." "Why don't you fly?" she asked him. "Every minute you spend here increases your danger. The men may return at any moment." "That's funny, too," he answered, and a look of singular, musing tenderness fell over his face. "I'd rather sit here with you and take my chances." "But you must not! You are imperiling your life for nothing." "You're mistaken there. I'm getting something every minute--something that will stay with me all my life. After I leave you it doesn't matter. I came into the hills just naturally, the way the elk does. After that girl reported me, life didn't count. Seeing you has changed me. It matters a whole lot to me this minute, and when I leave you it's stormy sunset for me, sure thing." Alice gazed upon him with steady eyes, but her bosom rose and fell with the emotion which filled her heart. She debated calling for Mrs. Adams, but there was something in the droop of the outlaw's head, in the tone of his voice, which arrested her. However sudden and frenzied his admiration might seem to others, it was sincere and manly, of that she was persuaded. Nevertheless, she was deeply perturbed. "I wish you would go," she entreated at last, huskily. "I don't want to see you taken. You have made yourself a criminal and I ought not to find excuses for you, but I do. You're so young. It doesn't seem as if you knew what you were doing. Why don't you ride away into the wild north country and begin a new life somewhere? Can't you escape to Canada?" He seized eagerly upon her suggestion. "Will you write to me if I do?" "No, I cannot promise that." "Why can't I play the ranger here and wait upon you till the men return?" "Because Professor Ward read that placard with me. He will know you instantly. I wish you'd go. Gage may come at any moment now." Peggy came in with disturbed look. "It looks like rain," she announced; "the clouds are settling down all over the peaks." The outlaw sprang up and went to the door. "It looked bad when I got up," he said, as he studied the sky. "I guess we're in for trouble. It may be snow." His fears were soon realized. Rain began to fall in a thin drizzle, and at four o'clock the first faint flakes of snow began to flash amid the gray veils of the water-drops. The women looked at each other in alarm as the cabin's interior darkened with the ominous shadow of the storm. "I don't like this a bit," said Peggy, after a while. "This is no mountain squall. I wish the men were here." "It can't be anything that will last," replied Alice. "It isn't time for the winter snows."