beginning that his spirits were rising over the disappointment of having to quit his grandfather's retreat.
To one who might meet and casually pass them on the road, it would appear that three men were on their way to the north that summer morning. Helena had assumed man's attire the day Henderson and Felipe brought her to Pablo's house, partly for the disguise it might afford, mainly to facilitate her flight when it came to taking horse again. She seemed a handsome youth, fresh of cheek as an apricot in that growing day, her abundant hair—which she would have sacrified to her disguise only for Henderson's stern prohibition—gathered under her sombrero, the immense brim of which shadowed her face. Her all-enveloping cloak covered her limbs to the stirrups, leaving little of the lines of her body to betray her.
Helena's shocked mind had cast off its oppression of fear with the gloom of her underground hiding-place. She rode with a lively brightness in her eyes, a quick ear for every sound, a hearty determination in her pose, the fullest confidence in Gabriel Henderson's ability to carry her to safety in the face of the strongest army that ever marched. Now and then she turned to express this confidence in a smile that sprung in her sympathetic eyes and warmed her face with its glow.
They were approaching the dividing-point in the road, where the right-hand branch led eastward to San Gabriel, the left through the pass
