Stewart halted again.  In the gloom Madeline discerned a log cabin, and beyond it pear-pointed dark trees piercing the sky-line.  She could just make out Stewart’s tall form as he leaned against his horse.  Either he was listening or debating what to do—­perhaps both.  Presently he went inside the cabin.  Madeline heard the scratching of a match; then she saw a faint light.  The cabin appeared to be deserted.  Probably it was one of the many habitations belonging to prospectors and foresters who lived in the mountains.  Stewart came out again.  He walked around the horses, out into the gloom, then back to Madeline.  For a long moment he stood as still as a statue and listened.  Then she heard him mutter, “If we have to start quick I can ride bareback.”  With that he took the saddle and blanket off his horse and carried them into the cabin.

“Get off,” he said, in a low voice, as he stepped out of the door.

He helped her down and led her inside, where again he struck a match.  Madeline caught a glimpse of a rude fireplace and rough-hewn logs.  Stewart’s blanket and saddle lay on the hard-packed earthen floor.

“Rest a little,” he said.  “I’m going into the woods a piece to listen.  Gone only a minute or so.”

Madeline had to feel round in the dark to locate the saddle and blanket.  When she lay down it was with a grateful sense of ease and relief.  As her body rested, however, her mind became the old thronging maze for sensation and thought.  All day she had attended to the alert business of helping her horse.  Now, what had already happened, the night, the silence, the proximity of Stewart and his strange, stern caution, the possible happenings to her friends—­all claimed their due share of her feeling.  She went over them all with lightning swiftness of thought.  She believed, and she was sure Stewart believed, that her friends, owing to their quicker start down the mountain, had not been headed off in their travel by any of the things which had delayed Stewart.  This conviction lifted the suddenly returning dread from her breast; and as for herself, somehow she had no fear.  But she could not sleep; she did not try to.

Stewart’s soft steps sounded outside.  His dark form loomed in the door.  As he sat down Madeline heard the thump of a gun that he laid beside him on the sill; then the thump of another as he put that down, too.  The sounds thrilled her.  Stewart’s wide shoulders filled the door; his finely shaped head and strong, stern profile showed clearly in outline against the sky; the wind waved his hair.  He turned his ear to that wind and listened.  Motionless he sat for what to her seemed hours.

Then the stirring memory of the day’s adventure, the feeling of the beauty of the night, and a strange, deep-seated, sweetly vague consciousness of happiness portending, were all burned out in hot, pressing pain at the remembrance of Stewart’s disgrace in her eyes.  Something had changed within her so that what had been anger at herself was sorrow for him.  He was such a splendid man.  She could not feel the same; she knew her debt to him, yet she could not thank him, could not speak to him.  She fought an unintelligible bitterness.