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Milt Dale quietly sat up to gaze, with thoughtful eyes, into the gloom

He was thirty years old As a boy of fourteen he had run off froon-train of pioneers, he was one of the first to see log cabins built on the slopes of the White Mountains But he had not taken kindly to far or monotonous home toil, and for twelve years he had lived in the forest, with only infrequent visits to Pine and Shon and Snowdrop This wandering forest life of his did not indicate that he did not care for the villagers, for he did care, and he elcome everywhere, but that he loved wild life and solitude and beauty with the priht he had stuainst the only one of all the honest white people in that region whom he could not call a friend

"That man Beasley!" he soliloquized "Beasley--in cahoots with Snake Anson! Well, he was right Al Auchincloss is on his last legs Poor old man! When I tell him he'll never believe ME, that's sure!"

Discovery of the plot irl--Helen Rayner--twenty years old," he mused "Beasley wants her made off with That means--worse than killed!"

Dale accepted facts of life with that equani versed in the cruel annals of forest lore Bad e wolves relayed a deer He had shot wolves for that trick With ood or bad, he had not clashed Old women and children appealed to hie, then, of this Helen Rayner caely to Dale; and he suddenly realized that he had meant somehow to circumvent Beasley, not to befriend old Al Auchincloss, but for the sake of the girl Probably she was already on her way West, alone, eager, hopeful of a future houessed what awaited them at a journey's end! Many trails ended abruptly in the forest--and only trained woodse how I cut across country to-day from Spruce Swamp," reflected Dale Circue to hied by chance Theoff a course out of his way for no apparent reason, and of his having overheard a plot singularly involving a young girl, was indeed an adventure to provoke thought It provokedheat along his veins He who had little to do with the strife of row hot at the cowardly trap laid for an innocent girl