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They were coming back up the mountain now. They were singing one of those terrible songs about hanging somebody by the roadside, the one that had always made her mother turn pale.
    Fraley sprang to the stove and broke eggs into the hot fat beside the meat. She would give them such a supper as would make them forget her for the moment.
    The corn bread was ready, smoking hot on the table as the men came noisily in. Brand watched her as he towered above the rest, his evil eyes gloating, she thought, with the same look that had been in Pete’s eyes. She brought the coffee pot and set the frying pan with its sizzling meat and eggs in the middle of the table, and the men, with drunken satisfaction, sat down and drew up their chairs. They were joking among themselves about their task just completed, in words that froze her heart with sorrow and horror. But she was glad to have their attention for the moment taken from herself.
    They were all busy with the first mouthfuls now like hungry wolves, too busy to spring.
    She turned stealthily, and her foot touched something. It was the old tin cup that Brand had kicked away in his anger. With quick instinct, she stooped and picked it up. She might need it. Some bits of dry bread that were on the shelf as she passed she swept into it, and hiding the cup in the scant gathers of her cotton dress, she made a stealthy movement toward the door of the room that had been her refuge from the terrors of the world ever since she could remember.
    The men did not notice her. They were eating.
    Silently, as unobtrusively as she could move, she glided to the door and slipped within. They had not seemed to notice she was gone. She pushed the bolt quickly. It was a large bolt, and her mother had kept it well oiled so that it would move quickly and silently if need be. There was a bar, too, that slipped across the bottom of the door. That, too, her mother had cunningly, crudely arranged. Probably it would not endure long in a united attack, but it was a brief hindrance, at least. It she only dared draw the old trunk across the door! But that would make a noise.
    Stealthily, she moved in the dark little room that was scarcely larger than a closet. With fingers weak with fear, she lifted the loose board beneath the cot and pulled out the woolen bag. Suppressing the quick sob at the thought of her mother, she opened the flap of the bag and stowed away the tin cup and bread, then standing on tiptoe, she lifted the bag to the little high window over the bed and pushed it softly over the sill. As it fell she listened breathlessly. What if the men should hear it drop, or Larcha the old dog should begin to bark, and the men should go out to look around!
    Softly, she took down the old coat that had hung on a peg in the wall ever since her father died and put it on. The men were talking loudly now. Two of them seemed to be fighting over something that a third had said. It would perhaps come to blows. It often did. She welcomed the noise. It would cover her going. But as she stepped upon her little bed, her heart suddenly froze in her breast! What was the terrible thing they were saying? It was about herself they were fighting. They were saying unspeakably awful things. For an instant, she seemed paralyzed and could not move. Then fear set her free, and she was stung into action. It was not an easy matter to climb from the creaky little cot to the high narrow windowsill above without making a particle of noise, and she was trembling in every nerve.
    The window was barely large enough to let her slenderness through, and it required skill to swing outside, cling to the windowsill, and then drop with catlike softness to the ground, but it was not the first time she had accomplished it. There had been other times of stress in the little cabin when her mother had sent her away in a hurry to a refuge she had, out in the open, and that experience helped her now. But there was no time to pause and be cautious, for at any