She dropped her hands from tying the scarf under her chin, returning for his words a look of mingled curiosity, indecision, and distrust.

Quick as she looked upon him, his mind’s eye looked upon himself; there he stood in grotesque undress, bound around with the cords of an extraordinary disgrace.  He blamed himself at the moment for not having had his hair cut more recently, for he knew that it stood in a wild shock above his head, and he felt that it dangled in his eyes.  Then a gust of emotion, the momentary desire for laughter or groans of vexation, rose and choked his utterance, and in the minute that he was mute the girl, sitting down upon a low stool, began tightening the strings of her moccasins, which, after the first putting on, had relaxed with the warmth of the feet.  Her business-like preparations for the road maddened him.

‘Don’t you see,’ he said, ’what disgrace you are heaping upon me?  What right have you to deny to me, a gentleman and your guest, the right to serve and protect you?  Consider to what wretchedness you consign me if I am left here to think of you fighting alone with this dangerous storm, or attacked by blackguards who we know may not be far away!’

She said in a quiet, practical, girlish way, ’It was I who was responsible for letting you in last night, and then this happened—­this most unheard-of thing.  We never heard of any but a petty theft ever committed in this whole region before.  Now I am bound to keep you here until we can hear where father’s silver is.’

‘You don’t believe that I have done it!  I am sure you do not’ (he believed what he said).  ’Why haven’t you the courage to act upon your conviction?  You will never regret it.’

‘Eliz says that she saw you quite distinctly.’

‘Eliz is a little fool,’ were the words that arose within him, but what he said was, ’Your sister is excitable and nervous; she saw the thief undoubtedly, and by some miserable freak of fortune he may have resembled me.’

‘Does that seem at all likely?’

‘Well, then, there was no resemblance, and she fancied it.’

She stood up, looking harassed, but without relenting.  ’I must go—­there is nothing else to be done.  Do you think I would stay here when a day might make all the difference in recovering the things which belonged to my father?  Do you think that I am going to lose the things that belonged to him just because I am too much of a coward to go out and give the alarm?’

She walked away from him resolutely, but the thought of the lost treasures and all the dear memories that in her mind were identified with them seemed to overcome her.  She drew her hand hastily across her eyes, and then, to his dismay, the sorrow for her loss emphasised her wavering belief in his guilt; for the first time he realised how strong that sorrow was.  Impelled by emotion she turned again and came shrinkingly back into his presence.