When she became conscious of his presence she glanced up at him with swift inquiry.  “How’s the fire?” she wanted to know, quite as though that was the only subject that interested them both.

“She’s all there,” he returned briefly, coming in.

“Everything’s ready,” she announced cheerfully.  “You must be half starved.  Do you see what time it is? nearly eight o’clock already.  And I never dreamed it, until a bird or something flew right past my face and brought me to myself.  I was watching Mount Lassen.  Isn’t it keen, to have a volcano spouting off right in your front view?  And a fire on the other side, so if you get tired looking at one, you can turn your head and look at the other one.  And for a change, you can watch the lake, or just gaze at the scenery; and say!—­does the star spangled banner still wave?”

“She still waves,” Jack assented somberly, picking up the wash basin.  Why couldn’t he enter the girl’s foolery?  He used to be full of it himself, and he used to consider that the natural form of companionship.  He must be getting queer like all other hermits he had ever heard of.  It occurred to him that possibly Marion Rose was not really feather-brained, but that the trouble was in himself, because he was getting a chronic grouch.

He was thinking while he ate.  He had plenty of encouragement for thinking, because Marion herself seemed to be absorbed in her own thoughts.  When she was filling his coffee cup the second time, she spoke quite abruptly.

“It would be terribly foolish for you to leave here, Jack Corey—­or whatever you would rather be called.  I don’t believe any one has the faintest notion that you came up here into this country.  If they had, they would have come after you before this.  But they’re still on the watch for you in other places, and I suppose every police station in the country has your description tacked on the wall or some place.

“I believe you’d better stay right where you are, and wait till something turns up to clear you.  Maybe that man will get well, and then it won’t be so serious; though, of course, being right through his lungs, the doctors claim it’s pretty bad.  I’ll know if he dies or not, because he’s a friend of Fred’s, and Fred would hear right away.  And we can make up a set of signals, and flash them with glasses, like we were doing just for fun this afternoon.  Then I won’t have to climb clear up here if something happens that you ought to know about—­don’t you see?  I can walk out in sight of here and signal with my vanity mirror.  It will be fun.

“And when you’re through here, if I were you I’d find some nice place here in the hills to camp.  It isn’t half as bad to stay right in the mountains, as it would be to stay in town and imagine that every strange man you see has come after you.  Sometimes I wish I could get right out where there’s not a soul, and just stay there.  Being in the woods with people around is not like