“But that needn’t prevent your being a gentleman,” she interrupted.

That made me almost desperate.  “Miss Cullen,” I groaned, hurriedly, “I’d rather be burned alive than do what I’ve got to, but if you won’t give me those letters, search you I must.”

“But how can I give you what I haven’t?” she cried, indignantly, assuming again her innocent expression.

“Will you give me your word of honor that those letters are not concealed in your clothes?”

“I will,” she answered.

I was very much taken aback, for it would have been so easy for Miss Cullen to have said so before that I had become convinced she must have them.

“And do you give me your word?”

“I do,” she affirmed, but she didn’t look me in the face as she said it.

I ought to have been satisfied, but I wasn’t, for, in spite of her denial, something forced me still to believe she had them, and looking back now, I think it was her manner.  I stood reflecting for a minute, and then requested, “Please stay where you are for a moment.”  Leaving her, I went over to Fred.

“Mr. Cullen,” I said, “Miss Cullen, rather than be searched, has acknowledged that she has the letters, and says that if we men will go into the hut she’ll get them for me.”

He rose at once.  “I told my father not to drag her in,” he muttered, sadly.  “I don’t care about myself, Mr. Gordon, but can’t you keep her out of it?  She’s as innocent of any real wrong as the day she was born.”

“I’ll do everything in my power,” I promised.  Then he and Hance went into the cabin, and I walked back to the culprit.

“Miss Cullen,” I said gravely, “you have those letters, and must give them to me.”

“But I told you—­” she began.

To spare her a second untruth, I interrupted her by saying, “I trapped your brother into acknowledging that you have them.”

“You must have misunderstood him,” she replied, calmly, “or else he didn’t know that the arrangement was changed.”

Her steadiness rather shook my conviction, but I said, “You must give me those letters, or I must search you.”

“You never would!” she cried, rising and looking me in the face.

On impulse I tried a big bluff.  I took hold of the lapel of her waist, intending to undo just one button.  I let go in fright when I found there was no button—­only an awful complication of hooks or some other feminine method for keeping things together—­and I grew red and trembled thinking what might have happened had I, by bad luck, made anything come undone.  If Miss Cullen had been noticing me, she would have seen a terribly scared man.

But she wasn’t, luckily, for the moment my hand touched her dress, and before she could realize that I snatched it away, she collapsed on the rock, and burst into tears.  “Oh! oh!” she sobbed, “I begged papa not to, but he insisted they were safest with me.  I’ll give them to you, if you’ll only go away and not—­” Her tears made her inarticulate, and without waiting for more I ran into the hut, feeling as near like a murderer as a guiltless man could.