Young Stewart had been greatly puzzled by Sammy’s attitude.  It was so unexpected, and, to his mind, so unreasonable.  He loved the girl as much as it was possible for one of his weak nature to love; and he had felt sure of his place in her affections.  But the door that had once yielded so readily to his touch he had found fast shut.  He was on the outside, and he seemed somehow to have lost the key.  In this mood on his way home, he had reached the spot that was so closely associated with the girl, and, pausing to rest after the sharp climb, had fallen to brooding over his disappointment.  So intent was he upon his gloomy thoughts that he had not heard Young Matt approaching, and was wholly unconscious of that big fellow’s presence in the vicinity.

For a time the face at the edge of the path regarded the figure on the rock intently; then it dropped from sight.  Young Matt slipped quietly down into the ravine, and a few moments later climbed again to the Old Trail at a point hidden from the Lookout.  Here he stepped quickly across the narrow open space and into the bushes on the slope of the mountain above.  Then with the skill of one born and reared in the woods, the mountaineer made his way toward the man on the shoulder of the hill.

What purpose lay under his strange movement Young Matt did not know.  But certainly it was not in his mind to harm Ollie.  He was acting upon the impulse of the moment; an impulse to get nearer and to study unobserved the person of his rival.  So he stalked him with all the instinct of a creature of the woods.  Not a twig snapped, not a leaf rustled, as from bush to fallen log, from tree trunk to rock, he crept, always in the black shadows, or behind some object.

But there were still other eyes on Old Dewey that night, and sharp ears heard the big woodsman climbing out of the ravine, if Ollie did not.  When the young man in the clear light of the moon crossed the Old Trail, a figure near the clump of trees, where he had sat with his two friends that day, dropped quietly behind a big rock, half hidden in the bushes.  As the giant crept toward the Lookout, this figure followed, showing but little less skill than the mountaineer himself.  Once a loose stone rattled slightly, and the big fellow turned his head; but the figure was lying behind a log that the other had just left.  When Young Matt finally reached the position as close to Ollie as he could go without certain discovery, the figure also came to a rest, not far away.

The moments passed very slowly now to the man crouching in the shadows.  Ollie looked at his watch.  It was early yet to one accustomed to late hours in the city.  Young Matt heard distinctly the snap of the case as the watch was closed and returned to its owner’s pocket.  Then Stewart lighted a cigar, and flipped the burned out match almost into his unseen companion’s face.

It seemed to Young Matt that he had been there for hours.  Years ago he left his home yonder on the ridge, to look for stray stock.  They must have forgotten him long before this.  The quiet cabin in the Hollow, and his friend, the shepherd, too, were far away.  In all that lonely mountain there was no one—­no one but that man on the rock there; that man, and himself.  How bright the moon was!