Nevertheless, he manifested an unreasonable dislike for Hampton.  He had never before felt thus toward this person; indeed, he had possessed a strong man’s natural admiration for the other’s physical power and cool, determined courage.  He now sincerely feared Hampton’s power over the innocent mind of the girl, imagining his influence to be much stronger than it really was, and he sought after some suitable means for overcoming it.  He had no faith in this man’s professed reform, no abiding confidence in his word of honor; and it seemed to him then that the entire future of the young woman’s life rested upon his deliverance of her from the toils of the gambler.  He alone, among those who might be considered as her true friends, knew the secret of her infatuation, and upon him alone, therefore, rested the burden of her release.  It was his heart that drove him into such a decision, although he conceived it then to be the reasoning of the brain.

And so she was Naida Gillis, poor old Gillis’s little girl!  He stopped suddenly in the road, striving to realize the thought.  He had never once dreamed of such a consummation, and it staggered him.  His thought drifted back to that pale-faced, red-haired, poorly dressed slip of a girl whom he had occasionally viewed with disapproval about the post-trader’s store at Bethune, and it seemed simply an impossibility.  He recalled the unconscious, dust-covered, nameless waif he had once held on his lap beside the Bear Water.  What was there in common between that outcast, and this well-groomed, frankly spoken young woman?  Yet, whoever she was or had been, the remembrance of her could not be conjured out of his brain.  He might look back with repugnance upon those others, those misty phantoms of the past, but the vision of his mind, his ever-changeable divinity of the vine shadows, would not become obscured, nor grow less fascinating.  Let her be whom she might, no other could ever win that place she occupied in his heart.  His mind dwelt upon her flushed cheeks, her earnest face, her wealth of glossy hair, her dark eyes filled with mingled roguery and thoughtfulness,—­in utter unconsciousness that he was already her humble slave.  Suddenly there occurred to him a recollection of Silent Murphy, and his strange, unguarded remark.  What could the fellow have meant?  Was there, indeed, some secret in the life history of this young girl?—­some story of shame, perhaps?  If so, did Hampton know about it?

Already daylight rested white and solemn over the silent valley, and only a short distance away lay the spot where the crippled scout had made his solitary camp.  Almost without volition the young officer turned that way, crossed the stream by means of the log, and clambered up the bank.  But it was clear at a glance that Murphy had deserted the spot.  Convinced of this, Brant retraced his steps toward the camp of his own troop, now already astir with the duties of early morning.  Just in front of his tent he encountered his first sergeant.