In a few moments he reappeared, laden with provisions and a few simple cooking utensils, and touched her lightly on the shoulder.
She looked up timidly; the paroxysm had passed, but her lashes yet glittered.
"Come," he said, "come and get some breakfast.

I find you have eaten nothing since you have been here--twenty-four hours." "I didn't know it," she said, with a faint smile.

Then seeing his burden, and possessed by a new and strange desire for some menial employment, she said hurriedly, "Let me carry something--do, please," and even tried to disencumber him.
Half annoyed, Low at last yielded, and handing his rifle said, "There, then, take that; but be careful--it's loaded!" A cruel blush burnt the woman's face to the roots of her hair as she took the weapon hesitatingly in her hand.
"No!" she stammered, hurriedly lifting her shame-suffused eyes to his; "no! no!" He turned away with an impatience which showed her how completely gratuitous had been her agitation and its significance, and said, "Well, then, give it back if you are afraid of it." But she as suddenly declined to return it; and shouldering it deftly, took her place by his side.

Silently they moved from the hollow tree together.
During their walk she did not attempt to invade his taciturnity.
Nevertheless she was as keenly alive and watchful of his every movement and gesture as if she had hung enchanted on his lips.

The unerring way with which he pursued a viewless, undeviating path through those trackless woods, his quick reconnaissance of certain trees or openings, his mute inspection of some almost imperceptible footprint of bird or beast, his critical examination of certain plants which he plucked and deposited in his deerskin haversack, were not lost on the quick-witted woman.