He explained to her as clearly as he could, and as reason seemed to point out to him.  It was impossible, he assured her, that Brokaw or Hauck or any other man could harm her now that he was here to take care of her and straighten matters out.  He was as frank with her as she had been with him.  Her eyes widened when he told her that he did not believe Hauck was her uncle, and that he was certain the woman whom he had met that night on the Transcontinental, and who was searching for an O’Doone, had some deep interest in her.  He must discover, if possible, how the picture had got to her, and who she was, and he could do this only by going to the Nest and learning the truth straight from Hauck.  Then they would go on to the coast, which would be an easy journey.  He told her that Hauck and Brokaw would not dare to cause them trouble, as they were carrying on a business of which the provincial police would make short work, if they knew of it.  They held the whip hand, he and Marge.  Her eyes shone with increasing faith as he talked.

She had leaned a little over the narrow rock between them so that her thick curls fell in shining clusters under his eyes, and suddenly she reached out her arms through them and her two hands touched his face.

“And you will take me away?  You promise?”

“My dear child, that is just what I came for,” he said, feigning to be surprised at her questions.  “Fifteen hundred miles for just that. Now don’t you believe all that I’ve told you about the picture?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

She had drawn back, and was looking at him so steadily and with such wondering depths in her eyes that he found himself compelled for an instant to turn his own gaze carelessly away.

“And you used to talk to it,” she said, “and it seemed alive?”

“Very much alive, Marge.”

“And you dreamed about me?”

He had said that, and he felt again that warm rise of blood.  He felt himself in a difficult place.  If she had been older, or even younger....

“Yes,” he said truthfully.

He feared one other question was quite uncomfortably near.  But it didn’t come.  The girl rose suddenly to her feet, flung back her hair, and ran to Tara, dozing in the sun.  What she was saying to the beast, with her arms about his shaggy neck, David could only guess.  He found himself laughing again, quietly of course, with his back to her, as he picked up their dinner things.  He had not anticipated such an experience as this.  It rather unsettled him.  It was amusing—­and had a decided thrill to it.  Undoubtedly Hauck and Brokaw were rough men; from what she had told him he was convinced they were lawless men, engaged in a very wide “underground” trade in whisky.  But he believed that he would not find them as bad as he had pictured them at first, even though the Nest was a horrible place for the girl.  Her running away was the most natural thing in the