The girl spoke again softly, almost as if she were in the presence of that far-off Nemesis.  “I suppose he deserved,it.  It’s an awful thing to be a traitor; to sell the people who have befriended you.  We can’t put ourselves in his place and know why he did it.  All we can say is that we’re glad—­ glad that we have never known men who do such things.  Do you think people always felt a sort of shrinking when they were near him, or did he seem just like other men?”

Glancing at the man who rode beside her, she cried out at the stricken look on his face.  “It’s your heart again.  You’re worn out with anxiety and privations.  I should have remembered and come slower,” she reproached herself.

“I’m all right—­ now.  It passes in a moment,” he said hoarsely.

But she had already slipped from the saddle and was at his bridle rein.  “No—­ no.  You must get down.  We have plenty of time.  We’ll rest here till you are better.”

There was nothing for it but to obey.  He dismounted, feeling himself a humbug and a scoundrel.  He sat down on a mossy rock, his back against another, while she trailed the reins and joined him.

“You are better now, aren’t you?” she asked, as she seated herself on an adjacent bowlder.

Gruffly he answered:  “I’m all right.”

She thought she understood.  Men do not like to be coddled.  She began to talk cheerfully of the first thing that came into her head.  He made the necessary monosyllabic responses when her speech put it up to him, but she saw that his mind was brooding over something else.  Once she saw his gaze go up to the point on the cliff reached by the fugitive.

But it was not until they were again in the saddle that he spoke.

“Yes, he got what was coming to him.  He had no right to complain.”

“That’s what my father says.  I don’t deny the justice of it, but whenever I think of it, I feel sorry for him.”

“Why?”

Despite the quietness of the monosyllable, she divined an eager interest back of his question.

“He must have suffered so.  He wasn’t a brave man, they say.  And he was one against many.  They didn’t hunt him.  They just closed the trap and let him wear himself out trying to get through.  Think of that awful week of hunger and exposure in the hills before the end!”

“It must have been pretty bad, especially if he wasn’t a game man.  But he had no legitimate kick coming.  He took his chance and lost.  It was up to him to pay.”

“His name was David Burke.  When he was a little boy I suppose his mother used to call him Davy.  He wasn’t bad then; just a little boy to be cuddled and petted.  Perhaps he was married.  Perhaps he had a sweetheart waiting for him outside, and praying for him.  And they snuffed his life out as if he had been a rattlesnake.”

“Because he was a miscreant and it was best he shouldn’t live.  Yes, they did right.  I would have helped do it in their place.”