“You may stay,” she asserted, soberly.  “Only don’t touch me.”

No one could ever realize how much those words hurt him.  He had been disciplined in far too severe a school ever to permit his face to index the feelings of his heart, yet the unconcealed shrinking of this uncouth child from slightest personal contact with him cut through his acquired reserve as perhaps nothing else could ever have done.  Not until he had completely conquered his first unwise impulse to retort angrily, did he venture again to speak.

“I hope to aid you in getting back beside the others, where you will be less exposed.”

“Will you take him?”

“He is dead,” Hampton said, soberly, “and I can do nothing to aid him.  But there remains a chance for you to escape.”

“Then I won’t go,” she declared, positively.

Hampton’s gray eyes looked for a long moment fixedly into her darker ones, while the two took mental stock of each other.  He realized the utter futility of any further argument, while she felt instinctively the cool, dominating strength of the man.  Neither was composed of that poor fibre which bends.

“Very well, my young lady,” he said, easily, stretching himself out more comfortably in the rock shadow.  “Then I will remain here with you; it makes small odds.”

Excepting for one hasty, puzzled glance, she did not deign to look again toward him, and the man rested motionless upon his back, staring up at the sky.  Finally, curiosity overmastered the actor in him, and he turned partially upon one side, so as to bring her profile within his range of vision.  The untamed, rebellious nature of the girl had touched a responsive chord; unseeking any such result she had directly appealed to his better judgment, and enabled him to perceive her from an entirely fresh view-point.  Her clearly expressed disdain, her sturdy independence both of word and action, coupled with her frankly voiced dislike, awoke within him an earnest desire to stand higher in her regard.  Her dark, glowing eyes were lowered upon the white face of the dead man, yet Hampton noted how clear, in spite of sun-tan, were those tints of health upon the rounded cheek, and how soft and glossy shone her wealth of rumpled hair.  Even the tinge of color, so distasteful in the full glare of the sun, appeared to have darkened under the shadow, its shade framing the downcast face into a pensive fairness.  Then he observed how dry and parched her lips were.

“Take a drink of this,” he insisted heartily, holding out toward her as he spoke his partially filled canteen.

She started at the unexpected sound of his voice, yet uplifted the welcome water to her mouth, while Hampton, observing it all closely, could but remark the delicate shapeliness other hand.

“If that old fellow was her father,” he reflected soberly, “I should like to have seen her mother.”

“Thank you,” she said simply, handing back the canteen, but without lifting her eyes again to his face.  “I was so thirsty.”  Her low tone, endeavoring to be polite enough, contained no note of encouragement.