The look in his face must have given the girl some inkling of the truth.

She leaned a little forward, quickly and eagerly, and demanded: "Didn't you come from the Nest?
Didn't they send you--after me ?" She pointed down the narrow valley, her lips parted as she waited for his answer, her hair rioting over her breast again as she bent toward him.
"I've come fifteen hundred miles--from that direction," said David, swinging an arm toward the backward mountains.

"I've never been in this country before.

I don't know where the Nest is, or what it is.

And I'm not going to take you back to it unless you want to go.