"
"I understand."
"When I get back to Fairlands, I will make a night trip in the 'auto' to
that point, with supplies. You will meet me there. The day before I make
the trip, I'll signal you by mirror flashes that I am coming; and you will
answer from the peak. We'll agree on the time of day and the signals
to-morrow. When you have kept close, long enough for your beard and hair
to grow out well, everybody will have given you up for dead or gone. Then
I will take you down and give you a job in an orange grove. There's a
little house there where you can live. You won't need to show yourself
down-town and, in time, you will be forgotten. I'll bring you enough food
to-morrow to last you until I can return to town and can get back on the
first night trip."
The man who left James Rutlidge a few minutes later, after trying brokenly
to express his gratitude, was a creature very different from the poor,
frightened hunted, starving, despairing, wretch that Rutlidge had halted
an hour before. What that man was to become, would depend almost wholly
upon his benefactor.
When the man was gone, James Rutlidge again took up his field-glass. The
old home of Sibyl Andres was deserted.
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