The young woman with the old face, having devoured Maud with hungry, sad eyes, spoke in a shy, colorless voice.

"It would be better, miss, if you was to let the boys go outside. I could lend you my blanket while your clothes dried."

"That's very good of you," said Maud, "but I'm very warm and comfortable and drying out nicely."

One of the men rose, grinned awkwardly, and said:

"I'll just have a look at the weather." With affected carelessness he caught up one of the Winchesters and passed from sight toward the entrance of the cave. This manoeuvre seemed to have a cheering effect upon the other three.

"What do you find to shoot at this time of year?" asked Maud, and she smiled with great innocence.

"The game-laws," said the man who had spoken first, "weren't written for poor men."

"Don't tell me," exclaimed Maud, "that you've got a couple of partridges or even venison just waiting to be cooked and eaten!"

"No such luck," said the man.

Neither of the Carolinians had spoken. They steamed pleasantly and appeared to be looking for pictures in the hot embers. Their eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into their skulls. Men who were familiar with them would have known that they were very angry about something and as dangerous as a couple of rattlesnakes. After a long while they exchanged a few words in low voices and a strange tongue. It was the dialect of the Sea Island negroes—the purest African grafted on English so pure that nobody speaks it nowadays.

"What say?" asked one of the strangers roughly.

Colonel Meredith turned his eyes slowly upon the speaker.

"I remarked to my cousin," said he icily, "that in our part of the world even the lowest convict knows enough to rise to his feet when a lady enters the room and to apologize for being alive."

"In the North Woods," said the man sulkily, "no one stands on ceremony. If you don't like our manners, Mr. Baltimore Oriole, you can lump 'em, see?"

"I see," said Colonel Meredith quietly, "that that leather mail-bag over there belongs to the United States Government. And I have a strong suspicion, my man, that you and your allies were concerned in the late hold-up perpetrated on the Montreal express. And I shall certainly make it my business to report you as suspicious characters to the proper authorities."

"That'll be too easy," said the man. "And suppose we was what you think, what would we be doing in the meantime? I ask you what?"

Mr. Jonstone interrupted in a soft voice.

"Oh, quit blustering and threatening," he said.

"Say," said a man who had not yet spoken, "do you two sprigs of jasmine ever patronize the 'movies'? And, if so, did you ever look your fill on a film called 'Held for Ransom'? You folks has a look of being kind o' well to do, and it looks to me as if you'd have to pay for it."