“You could tell me his name?” he asked, again.

“His name,” she said, at last, “wouldn’t convey anything to you.  It wouldn’t do you any good to know it.”

“It would gratify my curiosity.  I should think you might do as much as that for me.”

“I’m doing a great deal for you as it is.  I don’t think you should ask for more.”

Her tone was one of reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left with a sense of having committed an indiscretion.  The consciousness brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to his position.  He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl should come and minister to his wants.  She herself did it so simply, so much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much of its strangeness.  Now and then he could detect some confusion in her manner as she served him, but he could see too that she surmounted it, in view of the fact that for him the situation was one of life and death.  She was clearly not indifferent to elementary social usages; she only saw that the case was one in which they did not obtain.  In his long, unoccupied hours of darkness it distracted his thoughts from his own peril to speculate about her; and when she appeared his questions were the more blunt because of the small opportunity she allowed for asking them.

“Won’t they miss you at home?” he inquired, on the next occasion when she entered his cell.

She paused with a look of surprise.

“At home?  Where do you mean?”

“Why—­where you live; where your mother lives.”

“My mother died a few months after I was born.”

“Oh!  But even so, you live somewhere, don’t you?”

“I do; but they don’t miss me there, if that’s what you want to know.”

“I was only afraid,” he said, apologetically, “that you were giving me too much of your time.”

“I’ve nothing else to do with it.  I shall be only too glad if I can help you to escape.”

“Why?  Why should you care about me?”

“I don’t,” she said, simply; “at least, I don’t know that I do.”

“Oh, then you’re helping me just—­on general principles?”

“Quite so.”

“Well,” he smiled, “mayn’t I ask why, again?”

“Because I don’t like the law.”

“You mean that you don’t like the law as a whole?—­or—­or this law in particular?”

“I don’t like any law.  I don’t like anything about it.  But,” she added, resorting to her usual method of escape, “we mustn’t talk any more now.  Some men passed here this morning, and they may be coming back.  They’ve given up looking for you; they are convinced you’re up in the lumber camps, but all the same we must be careful still.”

He had no further speech with her that day, and the next she remained at the cabin little more than an hour.

“It’s just as well for me not to excite curiosity,” she explained to him before leaving; “and you needn’t be uneasy now.  They’ve stopped the hunt altogether.  They say there’s not a spot within a radius of ten miles of Greenport that they haven’t searched.  It would never occur to any one that you could be here.  Every one knows me; and so the thought that I could be helping you would be the last in their minds.”