The startling suddenness of the outlaw chief's proposal appeared to take Jaquelina's breath away.

She did not attempt to answer him, but remained silently regarding him in surprise, not unmixed with terror.

"Have I taken you by surprise?" he inquired, after a moment, in a gentler tone. "Forgive me. I am used to rough men, not timid women. But consent to be my bride, Miss Meredith, and you will find me the tenderest lord a fair girl ever dreamed of. Do not answer me this moment. Take time to consider."

"I do not need a moment's time to consider," Jaquelina flashed forth indignantly. "Do you think I would marry a common robber, a horse-thief, an outlaw?"

She saw the dark eyes flash beneath the outlaw's mask.

"Those are harsh words, Miss Meredith," he said, with outward calmness. "They are not becoming under my own humble roof and from the lips of my guest."

"Not your guest, but your captive," the girl said, bitterly.

"A beloved captive," replied the outlaw. "Child, I do not know why my heart has gone out to you so strangely. It is not your beauty that has won me. Women more beautiful than you have smiled on me and my heart was untouched. But the moment I looked into your proud, dark eyes my soul seemed to recognize its true mate."

"You flatter me!" cried the captive, drawing her slight form erect with indignant scorn. "I the true mate of a man as reckless and crime-stained as you? You rate me highly indeed! Were I a man I would make you retract the insult at the sword's point."

"How? A duel?" asked the outlaw, laughing at her passionate vehemence.

"Yes, a duel," she answered, with unmoved gravity.

"You are a brave little girl, Miss Meredith," the outlaw answered, resting his white, well-formed hand on the back of a chair with easy grace, while he regarded her attentively. "You make me admire you more than ever."

"I am sorry for that," said Jaquelina, with spirit.

"Why?" he inquired, seeming to find pleasure in the very sound of her voice, although her words were so scornful. "Is admiration so distasteful to you?"

"From you it is," she said, and although he affected indifference her scornful tone had an arrow in it that secretly pierced his heart.

"What manner of a man might he be whose admiration would be acceptable to you, fair lady?" he inquired, coldly, yet with a certain wistfulness in his tone.

Jaquelina turned her dark eyes on the masked face of the outlaw, and regarded him steadily as she said, firmly:

"A man quite your opposite in everything—an honest, honorable, noble man, brave and without reproach."

"Sans peur et sans reproche—the Ardelle motto," muttered the outlaw beneath his dark mustache. "So, Miss Meredith, you are holding up before me a glass wherein I may see all that I am not?"

"Yes," she said; then after a minute, in which she gazed at the princely form in unwilling admiration, Jaquelina added, half-pityingly: "All that you might have been!"

"Yes, all that I might have been," he said, in a saddened and softened voice. "Are you a student of Whittier, Miss Meredith? Do you believe with him that

Jaquelina gazed in astonishment at him. A sudden sense of the strangeness of her position rushed over her.

She was here alone in the outlaw's cave, and he was talking sentiment to her.

She clasped her slim hands together, and the dark eyes looked at him pleadingly as she answered:

"I am too young and untutored to discuss these things with you, sir, and my mind is distracted by thoughts of home. Release me, if you please. If you will only show me the outlet of the cave I will find my way home. My friends will be alarmed at my continued absence."

"Do you hear the storm?" he asked. "It is pitchy dark, the rain and wind are fearful, and you are several miles from home."

"It is no matter," said the girl, desperately. "Only release me, and I will find my home if I have to crawl there. I am more afraid of you and your outlaw band than I am of the night and the darkness."

He looked at her thoughtfully.

"Child," he said, abruptly, "you need not fear me. I would not harm a hair on that little head, and yet, if I suffered you to go free, I suppose you would at once discover our hiding-place to our enemies."

Jaquelina remained perfectly silent.

"Is it not true?" he inquired, coldly.

She lifted her eyes and gazed at him defiantly.

"You mean that you would do so?" he said, interpreting her look aright.

"Yes, for it would be my duty to rid my neighborhood of such a scourge," she replied, very low.

Then there was a minute of perfect silence. The long lashes drooped upon her cheeks as the handsome outlaw studied her face.

Bowles came in with a small furnace filled with glowing coals, then silently withdrew.

"Draw near to the fire and dry your wet clothing," said the chief, abruptly.

"There would be no use," Jaquelina answered, coldly, "I shall be drenched through going home."

"You seem quite certain of going," he said, amused at her persistency. "I fear you will be disappointed, Miss Meredith. I regret the fact of Bowles bringing you here very much, and I shall order him to apologize to you for doing so. But I must tell you that my own safety demands that I shall keep you a prisoner in this cave until such time as we shall decide to leave the neighborhood, when, if you shall still persist in refusing my hand, I may, perhaps, release you."

Jaquelina made an impulsive rush toward the heavy curtains that shut in the comfortable apartment from the outer darkness of the cave, but the voice of the outlaw arrested her with her hand upon the thick hanging.

"I should not advise you to attempt leaving without my consent, Miss Meredith. I have sentries stationed through the cave. You would scarcely find them so courteous as myself!"

The white hands fell from the heavy curtains in dismay. Jaquelina remembered the rude, officious Bowles, and accepted the outlaw's statement as true. She looked at him in surprise and disgust.

"Why do you who appear to have the instincts and the training of a gentleman, herd with such ruffians?" she asked.

"Promise to marry me, and I will tell you why," he replied. "I will give up this life and try to become that which you said just now I might have been. Miss Meredith, I am in serious earnest. Become my wife, and I swear to you that you shall not have one wish ungratified. I am wealthy. I will take you away to some fair, bright clime where my history is all unknown. Costly jewels, splendid silks and laces—all that the heart of woman desires—shall be yours, with the adoration of a heart as true as truth."

"I care nothing for these things," Jaquelina answered, crimsoning with anger and disdain; "you have had my answer. Sooner than link my fate with one so wicked and crime-stained as your own, I would die here at your feet!"

"Do I, then, appear so utterly vile in the clear eyes of a pure woman?" inquired the outlaw chief, in a voice strangely tinctured with melancholy.

Jaquelina had drawn near the glowing furnace of coals, unconsciously attracted by the warmth that stole deliciously over her drenched and shivering frame.

She was too young and untouched by real sorrow to understand the vague remorse and pathos that quivered in the man's low voice. Yet when she answered "yes," it was a trifle more gently and kindly.

"I could never teach you to love me, then?" he said, questioningly.

"No," the girl said, decidedly, with her curly head set sidewise, and such an owlish gravity about her that the outlaw chief, who seemed "to be all things by turns, and nothing long," felt his risibilities excited, and laughed outright.

"Why do you laugh?" she inquired, with an air of offended dignity.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Meredith, for my rudeness," he said, "but as you stood there with the steam from your drenched clothing rising over your head, and the furnace blazing at your feet, you reminded me so comically of one of Shakespeare's witches that I was forced to laugh."

Jaquelina was thoroughly angry. To be laughed at by this man whom she scorned, was too much.

She stepped back into the darkest and coldest corner of the room, and stood there in silent, dignified displeasure.

"Pray do not allow my silly jest to drive you away from the fire," he exclaimed, anxiously. "Let me entreat you to return."

But his captive had sunk down upon the floor, and buried her face in her hands.

Folding his arms across his breast, the outlaw chief walked up and down across the soft, echoless carpet, his gloomy eyes fixed immovably upon the little crouching figure with the graceful head bowed on the clasped hands.

Jaquelina looked very childish and forlorn as she crouched there.

Quite suddenly she broke into a perfectly audible sob of grief and self-pity.

"I shall miss Violet Earle's party after all. And I had been so happy over it!"

It was the cry of a child over a broken toy, yet its artless pathos pierced the man's heart. He went quickly and knelt down beside her.

"Little one, what is this that you grieve for?" he asked, almost tenderly; "tell me?"

"It is only—only," sobbed the girl, "that you will cause me to lose the happiest hour of my life."

"Poor child! and life has so few happy hours," said the outlaw chief. "Tell me what it is you lament so much. Perhaps I may relent."

"It was Miss Violet Earle's lawn-party to-morrow night," sobbed Jaquelina. "She had invited me. I—I was never at a party in my life, and I wanted so much to see what it was like."

The listener frowned, then smiled beneath his concealing mask.

"Do not weep for that," he said. "I will tell you what every party is like, little girl. A party is an occasion when somebody else has a prettier dress than yours, and somebody else dances with your favorite beau once more than you did, and when you get home you are mad, and say you wouldn't have gone if you had known it, so there!"

"I don't believe it," wept Jaquelina, obstinately, "at least, not all of it. It may be true about the dress. I know Violet Earle's will be ever so much prettier than mine, but I should never, never wish I had not gone there."

Ah, Jaquelina, Jaquelina! If those dark eyes, dimmed now with childish tears, could but have pierced the secret of the untried future!

"She is but a simple child," the outlaw said to himself, pityingly. "Only a little wild bird. I have caged it, but it would never sing for me. I must let it fly back to its nest."

He touched the girl's damp, clinging curls lightly.

"Miss Meredith, look up at me," he said.

Jaquelina lifted her wet eyes inquiringly.

"Cannot you leave me in peace?" she asked, shrinking from his light touch impatiently.

He did not appear to notice the pretty, childish petulance.

"Little bird," he said, "I will give you your freedom if you will promise me just one thing—you will not reveal the secret of this cavern retreat to my enemies? It is the only price by which you can purchase freedom."

"Since it is my only chance of release, I must needs keep the secret," Jaquelina said; reluctantly. "What shall I tell them?"

"Only say that you were lost in the woods, and that the outlaw chief guided you to the road again," he replied.

"Very well," she replied; "but I warn you that if ever I see you elsewhere I will attempt to capture you."

He looked at the frank, determined face half-reproachfully a moment, then laughed at the threat.

Ten minutes after he was riding by Jaquelina's side through the stormy woods.

When the first faint beams of daylight glimmered in the cloudy east, he watched her riding safely toward home, mounted on the faithful Black Bess.

"Good-by, Miss Meredith," he had said, as they parted. "When you think of the outlaw whose love you scorned, do not forget that the bravest thing a brave man can do is to voluntarily resign the one fair woman who holds his heart."

But Jaquelina, with a cold and haughty bow, rode silently away.