Ona morning which Prime, consulting his notched stick, named as the twenty-fourth of July, they gave the canoe patches another daubing of pitch for good luck, relaunched their argosy, loaded the dunnage, and began to learn the art of paddling anew—the relearning being made strictly necessary by the new green-wood paddles.
From a boisterous mill-race in its upper reaches, their river had now subsided into a broad stream with a current so leisurely that they had to paddle continuously to make any headway. With this handicap their progress was slow, and it was not until the afternoon of the second day that they began to see signs to hint that they were approaching the settlements.
The signs were neither numerous nor indicative of any recent habitancy: a few old clearings with their stumps weathered and rotting; here and there a spot luxuriantlygreen to mark an area where slashings had been burned; in one place a decaying runway to show where the logs had been skidded into the river; all these proved that they were not pioneers; but withal they saw no human being to dispute possession with them.
In the evening of this second day they camped on the right-hand bank a short distance below one of the old clearings, kindling their night fire a few yards from the river in a small grove of second-growth pines. The place was not entirely to their liking; the river-bank was high, and they could not draw the canoe out without partially unloading it. While Lucetta was busying herself with the supper, Prime, as a precautionary measure, made a porter of himself to the extent of carrying a good part of the dunnage up to the fire, and after thus lightening the canoe he hauled it out of water as far as the steep bank would permit.
While they were eating supper an unexpected guest turned up. Lucetta was the first to hear the dip of a paddle in the stream, and a moment later they both heard thegrating of a boat bottom on the sand. Prime sprang up, rifle in hand, and went to meet the newcomer, prepared to do battle if needful. When he returned he was followed by a small man, dark, bearded, and with bead-like black eyes roving and shifty. He was dressed more like an Indian than a white man; there were fringes on his moccasins and also on the belted coat, which was much the worse for wear and hard usage.
"Moi, Jean Ba'tiste; I mek you de good evenin',m'sieu' et madame," he said, introducing himself brusquely, and as he spoke the roving eyes were taking in every detail of the bivouac camp. Then, with no more ado, he squatted beside the fire and became their supper guest, saying simply: "You eat?—good;moi, I eat, too."
Since there seemed to be no question of ceremony, Prime made the guest welcome, heaping his tin plate and pouring tea for him in the spare cup. The small man ate as if he were half starved, and was saving of speech during the process, though the roving eyes seemed to be doing double duty. The meal devoured, he produced a blackclay pipe with a broken stem and uttered a single word, "Tabac'?" and when the want was supplied he crumbled himself a pipeful from the twist which Prime handed him.
Prime filled his own home-made pipe, and at its lighting the guest began a curt inquisition.
"W'ere you come from?"
Prime explained without going into any of the kidnapping details.
"You campin' out for fon, mebbe, yes?" was the next query.
"A little that way," said Prime.
"You shoot wiz ze gon? W'ere all dat game w'at you get?"
"It isn't the game season," Prime parried. "We haven't tried to shoot anything."
"But you 'ave ze gon. Lemme see 'um," holding out a hand for the rifle.
Prime passed over the gun nearest at hand and drew the other one up within reach. The inquisitive supper guest looked the weapon over carefully and seemed to be trying to read something in the scratches on the stock.
"Vraiment!she's one good gon," he commented, passing it back. "W'ere you get 'um?"
"Vraiment! she's one good gon," he commented.... "W'ere you get 'um?"
"Vraiment! she's one good gon," he commented.... "W'ere you get 'um?"
Prime did not answer the question. He thought it was high time to ask a few of his own.
"What river is this?" he wanted to know.
"You make canoe on him and you not know dat? She is Mishamen; comes bimeby to Rivière du Lièvres."
"How far?"
"One, two, t'ree day; mebbe more."
"You mean that we will reach a town in two or three days?"
"Mebbe so, if you don' get los'."
Prime exchanged a quick glance with his fellow castaway. Lucetta signalled "Yes," and he acted accordingly.
"What will you charge to show us the way to the nearest town?" he asked.
The small man did not seem especially eager for money. He was examining the gun again. "Moi, I can't go—too bizzee. W'ere you got dis gon?"
"It came with our outfit," said Prime shortly. "We got it when we got the canoe."
"And w'ere you got dat canoe?"
The inquisition was growing rather embarrassing, but Prime answered as best he could.
"We got the outfit up at the big lake where we started from. We have come all the way down the river."
With this the restless-eyed querist appeared to be satisfied. At all events he did not press the questioning any further, and was content to take another pipe-filling from Prime's tobacco twist and to tell a little more about himself. He was "one ver' great trapper," in his own phrase, and was also a "timber looker" for a lumber company. Lucetta had withdrawn to the privacy of her tent, and Prime could not divest himself of the idea that the small man whose tongue had been so suddenly loosened was merely sparring for time, time in which to accomplish some end of his own. In due course the battery was unmasked.
"You say you beginvoyageuron ze big lake. W'ere you leave Jules Beaujeau an' Pierre Cambon, eh, w'at?"
"I don't know them," said Prime, telling the simple truth.
"Dis Pierre Cambon's gon," said the little man, suddenly tapping the weapon he had been inspecting. "She 'ave hees name on ze stock. An' ze birch-bark down yonder; she's belong' to Jules Beaujeau. You buy 'um?"
Prime scarcely knew what to say; whether to tell the truth, which would not be believed, or to make up a lie, which might be believed. As a compromise he chose a middle course, which is always the most dangerous.
"I don't know these two you speak of, by name; but the two men who owned the canoe and the guns are both dead."
The supper guest sprang up as if a bomb had been exploded under him and quickly put a safe distance between himself and the camp-fire.
"You—you kill 'um?" he demanded.
"No; come back here and sit down. They had a fight and killed each other."
The man returned hesitantly and squatted beside the fire to press another live coal into the bowl of his pipe. Prime switched the talk abruptly.
"You'd better change your mind aboutthe offer I made you and pilot us to the nearest town. We will pay you well for it."
"You got money?" was the short question.
"Plenty of it."
At this the "ver' great trapper" assumed to take the proposal under consideration, smoking other pipes, chaffering and bargaining and prolonging his stay deep into the night. When he finally took his leave, saying that he must go on to his camp, which was a few miles up one of the smaller tributaries of the main stream, it was with a half promise to come back in the morning for the piloting.
Prime took counsel of prudence and did not settle himself for the night immediately after the sharp-eyed one had gone. Laying his pipe aside, he crept cautiously out to the river-bank and assured himself that his late visitor was doing what he had said he would do, namely, heading off up the river with clean, quick strokes of the paddle, which soon sent his light craft out of sight. Prime climbed down the bank, satisfied himselfthat the patched canoe and its partial lading had not been disturbed, and then went back to the fire to roll himself in his blankets. The incident, with its inquisitorial pryings, had been rather disturbing, in a way, but it was apparently an incident closed.
Turning in so late after a laborious day on the river, Prime overslept the next morning, and when he awoke he found Lucetta already up and frying the bacon.
"Your man didn't stay all night?" she questioned, after Prime had scolded her for not making him get up and do his part.
"No; he sat here until between ten and eleven o'clock and gave me two or three bad minutes. He recognized our canoe and one of the guns, told me the names of the dead men, and wanted to know what had become of them."
"You didn't tell him?" she gasped.
"In the cold light of the morning after, I am afraid I told him too much or too little. I told him the men who owned the canoe and its outfit were dead; that they'd had a fight and killed each other. Candidly, Idon't think he believed it. It scared him until I thought he was going to have a fit. I had to jolly him up a bit before he would come back to the fire and talk some more."
"What does he believe?" she inquired anxiously.
"He wouldn't tell me, and I couldn't decide by merely looking at him. I hope I've hired him to pilot us to the nearest town. When he went away he intimated that he might be back this morning."
"Shall we wait for him?"
"No; if he isn't here by the time we are ready to start, we'll go on and take our chance of 'gettin' los',' as he put it. I think that was a bluff, anyway."
They breakfasted leisurely, and Prime even took time to smoke a pipe before beginning to break camp. But his first trip to the river-bank with a load of the dunnage brought him back on a run.
"Our canoe's gone!" he announced breathlessly. "That little wretch came back and stole it while we were asleep!"
Lucetta sat down and propped her chin in her hands.
"This is the beginning of the end, Donald," she said quite calmly and with a touch of resignation in her voice. "Do you know why he took the canoe?"
"Because he's an infernal thief!" Prime raged hotly.
"No," she contradicted. "It is because he thinks we have murdered the two owners of the canoe, and he wanted to make sure that we wouldn't run away while he went after help to arrest us."
Primeleaned against a tree and took a full minute for a grasping of the new situation.
"I more than half believe you are right," he admitted at length. Then, with a crabbed laugh: "If there is any bigger dunce on earth than I am I should like to meet him—just as a matter of curiosity. I'll never brag on my imagination after this. I could see plainly enough that the fellow was fairly eaten up with suspicion, and it would have been so easy to have invented a plausible lie to satisfy him."
"Don't be sorry for that," the young woman put in quickly. "If they arrest us we shall have to tell the truth."
Prime was frowning thoughtfully. "That is where the shoe pinches. Do you realize that the story we have to tell is one that no sane magistrate or jury could ever believe,Lucetta? These two men, Beaujeau and Cambon, must have started from some known somewhere, alive and well. They disappear, and after a while we turn up in possession of their belongings and try to account for ourselves by telling a fantastic fairy-tale. It's simply hopeless!"
"You are killing the only suggestion I had in mind," was the dispirited rejoinder. "I was going to say that we might wait here until they came for us, but that won't do at all. We must hurry and disappear before they come back and find us!"
"I think it will be best," Prime decided promptly. "If we had a reasonable story to tell it would be different. But we haven't, and the chances are that we should get into all sorts of trouble trying to explain for other people a thing that we can't explain for ourselves. It is up to us to hit the trail. Are you fit for it?"
"Why shouldn't I be?" she asked, but there was no longer the old-time buoyancy in her tone.
"I have had a notion the last day or two that you were not feeling quite up to themark," Prime explained soberly. "It is something about your eyes; they look heavy, as if you hadn't had sleep enough."
"I can do my part of anything that we have to do," she returned, rising; and together they made a judicious division of the dunnage, deciding what they could take and what they must leave behind.
The uncertainties made the decision hard to arrive at. If the tramp should last no more than three or four days they could carry the necessary food without much difficulty. But they could scarcely afford to give up the blankets and the shelter-tent, and Prime insisted that they must take at least one of the guns and the axe. These extras, with the provisions and the cooking-utensils, made one light load and one rather heavy one, and under this considerable handicap the day's march was begun.
The slow progress was difficult from the very outset. Since the river was their only guide, they did not dare to leave it to seek an easier path. By noon Prime saw that his companion was keeping up by sheer force of will, and he tried to get her to consent to ahalt for the afternoon. But she would not give up.
"No," she insisted. "We must go on. I am tired; I'll admit it; but I should be something worse than tired if we should have to stop and be overtaken."
From the beginning of the day's march they seemed to have left behind all of the former hopeful signs, and were once more making their way through a primeval forest, untouched, so far as they could see, by the woodsman's axe. Their night camp was made among the solemn spruces by the side of a little brook winding its way to the nearby river. Prime made a couch of the spruce-tips, the folded tent cloth, and the blankets, and persuaded Lucetta to lie down while he prepared the supper.
When the meal was ready the substitute cook was the only one who could eat. Lucetta said she didn't care for anything but a cup of tea, and when Prime took it to her he saw that the slate-gray eyes were unnaturally bright and her face was flushed. Whereat a great fear seized upon him.
"You are sick!" he exclaimed, grapplinghelplessly with the unnerving fear. "Why didn't you tell me before? I thought—I hoped you were just tired out with the long tramp."
"I shall be better in the morning," she answered bravely. "It has been coming on for a day or two, I think. Why did we camp here in this close place, where it is so hot?"
Prime gripped his fleeting courage and held it hard. It was not hot under the spruces; on the contrary, the evening was almost chilly. Bestirring himself quickly to do what little he was able to do, he moved the sick one gently and set up the tent to shelter her, dipped the remaining bit of the soft deerskin into the brook and made a cold compress for the aching head, and then sat down with a birch-bark fan to keep the mosquitoes away.
As the night wore on he realized more and more his utter helplessness. He had had no experience with sickness or with the care of the sick, and if the remedies had been at hand he would not have known how to use them. Time and again, after Lucetta had fallen into a troubled sleep, he madehis way to the riverbank to stare anxiously in the darkness up and down the stream in the faint hope that help might appear. But for all his longings the silent river gave back neither sight nor sound.
In the morning Lucetta's fever had abated, but it had left her weak and exhausted; much too weak to continue the march, though she was willing and anxious to make the trial. Prime vetoed that at once and tried his best to concoct something out of their diminished store of provisions that would prove appetizing to the invalid. She ate a little of the broth prepared from the smoked deer meat merely to please him, and drank thirstily of the tea; but still Prime was not encouraged.
During the afternoon Lucetta's temperature rose again, and, harassed and anxious as he was, Prime was thankful that the fever did not make her delirious. That, he told himself, would be the final straw. So far from wandering, she was able to talk to him; to talk and to thank him gratefully for his earnest but skilless attempts to make her more comfortable.
"It is simply maddening to think that there isn't anything really helpful that I can do," he protested, at one of these pathetic little outbreaks of gratitude. "What do they do for people who have fevers?"
"Quinine," she said, with a twitching of the lips which was meant to be a smile. "Why don't you give me a good big dose of quinine, Donald?"
"Yes, why don't I?" he lamented. "Why do I have to sit here like a bump on a log and do nothing!"
"You mustn't worry," she interposed gently. "You are not responsible for me and my aches and pains. You must try to remember that only a little more than three weeks ago we were total strangers to each other."
"Three weeks ago and now are two vastly different things, Lucetta. You have proved yourself to be the bravest, pluckiest little comrade that a man ever had! And I—I, whose life you have saved, can do nothing for you in your time of need. It's heartbreaking!"
The night, which came on all too slowlyfor the man who could do nothing, was even less hopeful than the previous one had been. Though he had no means of measuring it, Prime was sure that the fever rose higher. For himself he caught only cat-naps now and then during the long hours, and between two of these he went to the river-bank and built a signal-fire on the remote chance of summoning help in that way.
Between two and three o'clock in the morning the fever began to subside again, and the poor patient awoke. She was perfectly reasonable but greatly depressed, not so much over her own condition as on Prime's account. Again she sought to make him take the purely extraneous view, and when that failed she talked quite calmly about the possibilities.
"I have had so little sickness that I hardly know whether this is really serious or not," she said. "But if I shouldn't—if anything should happen to me, I hope you won't—you won't have to bury me in the river."
"For Heaven's sake, don't talk that way!" he burst out. "You're not going to die! Youmustn'tdie!"
"I am sure I don't want to," she returned. "Especially just now, when I was beginning to learn how to live. May I have a drink of water?"
He went to the brook and got it for her, raging inwardly at the thought that he could not even offer her a drink out of a vessel that wouldn't taste tinny. When her thirst was quenched she went on half musingly.
"I am glad there isn't any one to be so very sorry, Donald. I know it must be fine to have a family and to be surrounded by all kinds of love and affection; but those things carry terrible penalties. Did you ever think of that?"
"I hadn't," he confessed. "I've been a sort of lonesome one, myself."
"The penalties work both ways," she went on. "It breaks your heart to have to leave the loved ones, and it breaks theirs to have you go. I suppose the girls in the school will be sorry; they all seem to like me pretty well, even if I am a 'cross old maid,' as one of them once called me to my face."
"I can't imagine you cross; and as to your being old, why you're nothing but a kid,Lucetta—just a poor little sick kiddy. And, goodness knows, you've had enough to knock you out and to make you think all sorts of grubby thoughts. You mustn't; you are going to get well again, and we'll march along together the same as ever. Or perhaps the sheriff will find us, after all. I've kindled a big fire down on the river-bank so that he won't have any excuse for overlooking us. Day before yesterday I would have tramped twenty miles to dodge him, but to-night I'd welcome him with open arms."
"We were foolish to try to run away," she said. "And that was my fault, too. The—the next time you are kidnapped, you must be careful not to let yourself be tied to a petticoat, Cousin Donald. They are always in the way."
"If I hadn't been tied to a petticoat that could swim, I shouldn't be here to-night fanning the mosquitoes away from you," he retorted, with a laugh that was meant to be cheering. And then he reverted to his one overwhelming and blankly insoluble problem: "If I only knew what to do for you!"
"When I was a little girl we lived in the country, and my mother doctored the entire neighborhood with roots and herbs. It is a pity I haven't inherited a little of her skill, isn't it?"
"There are lashings of pitiful things in this world, Lucetta, and we are getting acquainted with a few of them right now. But I mustn't let you talk too much. Try to go to sleep, if you can, and get a little rest before the fever comes on again."
She closed her eyes obediently, and after a time he knew by her regular breathing that she was asleep. For a patient hour he kept the birch-bark fan in motion and with the first streakings of dawn got up stiffly to make his way to the river-bank, dragging with him a half-rotted log to turn the pillar-of-fire signal into a pillar of smoke.
Thedawning of the second day in the camp under the great spruces found Prime still struggling desperately with the problem of what to do. Lucetta's condition seemed to be rather worse than better. There was the usual morning abatement of the fever, but she was evidently growing weaker. Prime's too vivid imagination pictured an impending catastrophe, and the canoe thief, no less than Watson Grider, came in for wordless and despairing maledictions. If the canoe had not been stolen they might by now be within reach of help.
It was when matters were at this most distressing pass that the writing-man's invention, pricked alive by what Lucetta had said concerning her mother's skill with simples, opened a temerarious door of hope. Making his charge as comfortable as he could, and leaving a cup of water where she could reach it, he told her he was going for a walk.
Taking the brook for a pathfinder, he traced its course until it led him into a region of opener spaces where there was a better chance for ground growth. In the first weed patch he came to he began to pluck and taste. Unhappily, his knowledge of botany was perilously near a minus quantity; there were few of the weeds that he knew even by name. At the imminent risk of poisoning himself, he went on, chewing a leaf here and there, not knowing in the least what he was looking for, but having an inchoate idea that a febrifuge ought to be something bitter.
The tasting process gave him a variety of new experiences. The leaves of one weed burned his mouth like fire, and he had to stop and plunge his face into the brook to extinguish the conflagration. Those of another made him deathly sick. Finally he came to a tall plant with bluish-white flowers which looked familiar, in a way, though he could not recall its name. A chewed leaf convinced him at once that he need seek no farther. There was the bitterness of hopeless sorrow in its horrible acridity; it clung to him tenaciously while he was gatheringan armful of the plant, and went with him on his return to the camp—this, in spite of the fact that he stopped frequently to wash his mouth with brook water.
"What have you there?" was Lucetta's query when he came in with his burden.
"I don't know, but I am hoping you can tell me," he said, giving her a spray of the weed to look at. "Have you ever seen it before?"
"Hundreds of times," she returned. "It is a common weed in Ohio. But I haven't the slightest idea what it is."
Prime groaned. "More of the town-bred education," he deprecated. "But never mind; they can't call us nature-fakirs, whatever other foolish name we may be earning for ourselves."
"What are you going to do with it?" she asked.
"Wait and you'll see."
With the bread-mixing tin for a stew-pan Prime made a rich decoction of the leaves. When the mess began to simmer and steam the poor patient raised herself on one elbow to look at it.
"You are not going to make me drink all that, are you, Donald?" she protested weakly.
"Oh, no; not all of it. Wait until it's properly cooked and I'll show you what I am going to do with it."
The cooking took some time, but the culinary effort offered a mild diversion and was at least a change from the deadly routine of doing nothing. The steam rising from the stewing leaves gave off a peculiarly afflicting odor, and Lucetta sniffed it apprehensively.
"It smells very horrible," she ventured. "Is it going to taste as bad as it smells?"
"That, my dear girl, is on the knees of the gods," he returned oracularly.
"How did you find it?" she wanted to know.
"By the simple process of cut and try. And I can assure you that, however bad it may smell or taste, it hasn't anything on some of the leaves I've been chewing this morning."
When the dose was sufficiently cooked Prime fished the leaves out of the liquorwith a forked twig, and carried the stew-pan to the brook to take the scalding edge off of the ill-smelling decoction.
"Are you ready to be poisoned?" he asked when he came back.
"You're—you're sure itisn'tpoison, aren't you?" she quavered.
"No, but I am going to be," and with that he shut his eyes, held his breath, and took a long drink from the stew-pan of fate, disregarding easily, in the frightful bitterness of the draft, Lucetta's little cry of dismay.
"Merely trying it on the dog," he gasped when he put the pan down and turned away so that she should not see the face contortions—grimaces forthshowing the resentment of an outraged palate. Then he went to sit on his blanket-roll to await results. "If—if it doesn't kill me, then you can try it; but—but we'll wait a few minutes and see what it's going to do to me."
When the results proved to be merely embittering and not immediately deadly, he became a nurse again.
"I have left it as hot as you can drink it,"he said, offering the basin. "It seems as if it ought to do more good that way. Take a good long swig, if you can stand it."
Lucetta put her lips to the mixture and made a face of disgust.
"Ou-e-e-e!—boneset!" she shuddered. "I'd know it if I should meet it in another world—it takes me right back to my childhood and mother's roots and herbs! I can't, Donald; I simplycan'tdrink all of that!"
"Drink as much as you can. It's good for little sick people," he urged, trying to twist the wryness of his own aftermath into a smile. "If the horrible taste counts for anything, it ought to make you well in five minutes."
Lucetta did her duty bravely, and when the worst was over Prime tucked her up in the blankets, adding his own for good measure. Then he made up a roasting fire, having some vague notion brought over from his boyhood that fever patients ought to sweat. Past this, he made a sad cake of pan-bread for his own midday meal, and when it was eaten he found that Lucetta had fallen asleep, and was further encouraged when he saw thatfine little beads of perspiration had broken out on her forehead.
It was late in the afternoon before she awoke and called him.
"Are you feeling any better?" he asked.
"Much better; only I'm so warm I feel as if I should melt and run away. Can't you take at least one of the blankets off?"
"Not yet. You like to cook things, and I am giving you some of your own medicine. This is Domestic Science as applied to the human organization. Just imagine you are a missionary on one of the South Sea Islands, and that you are going to be served up presentlyà laFiji. Shall I try to fix you up something to eat?"
"Not yet. But I feel as if I could drink the brook dry."
"No cold water," he decided authoritatively. "The doctor forbids it. But you may have another drink of hot boneset tea."
"Oh, please, not again!" she pleaded; and at that he made her a cup of the other kind of tea, which she drank gratefully.
"Taste good?" he inquired.
"It tastes like the boneset—everything is going to taste like boneset for the next six weeks."
"Don't I know?" he chuckled. "Hasn't it already spoiled my dinner for me? I could taste it in everything." Then he told her about his experiment in pan-bread, adding: "I have saved a piece of it so that if you wish to commit suicide after you get well, the means will be at hand."
"Do you think I am going to get well, Donald?"
"Sure you are! You'll have to do it in self-defense. Just think of the oceans of bitterness you'll have to swallow if you don't. What is puzzling me now is to know what I am going to feed you. Do you suppose you could tell me how to make some pap or gruel, or something of that sort?"
She smiled at this, as he hoped she would, and said there was no need of crossing that bridge until they should come to it. Shortly after this she fell asleep again, and by nightfall Prime was overjoyed to find that her breathing was more natural, and that the fever was not rising. With the coming ofthe darkness a fine breeze blew up from the river, and he was overjoyed again when it proved strong enough to drive the tormenting mosquitoes back into the forest.
That night he was able to make up some of the lost sleep of the two preceding nights, and when daybreak came another burden was lifted. Lucetta had slept all night, and she declared she was feeling much better; that the fever seemed to be entirely gone. This brought the question of nourishment to the fore again, and Prime attacked it bravely, opening their last tin of peas and making a broth of the liquor thickened with a little of the reground flour. Lucetta ate it to oblige him, though it was as flat and tasteless as any unsalted mixture must be.
"Are you always as good as this to every strange woman you meet, Cousin Donald?" she said, meaning to make the query some expression of her own gratitude.
"Always," he returned promptly. "I can't help it, you know; I'm built that way. But you are no strange woman, Lucetta. If I can't do more for you, I couldn't very well do less. We are partners, andthus far we have shared things as they have come along—the good and the bad. What is troubling me most now is the same thing that was troubling me last night: I don't know what I am going to feed you. You need a meat broth of some kind."
"Not any more of the smoked venison, please!" she begged.
"No, it ought to be fresh meat of some sort. By and by, if the fever doesn't come back, I'll take the gun and see if I can't get a rabbit. I saw three yesterday morning while I was out chewing leaves. You won't be afraid to be left alone for a little while, will you?"
"After what we have been through, I think I shall never be afraid of anything again," she averred soberly. "And to think that I was once afraid of a mouse!"
"That is nothing," he laughed; "you probably will be afraid of a mouse again when you get back to an environment in which the mouse is properly an object of terror. I shan't think any the less of you if that does happen."
She smiled up at him.
"Men always talk so eloquently about the womanly woman: just what do they mean by that, Donald? Is it the mouse-coward?"
"It differs pretty widely with the man, I fancy," he returned. "I know my own ideal."
"She is the imaginary girl whose picture you are going to show me when we get out?"
He laughed happily. "You mustn't make me talk about that girl now, Lucetta. Some day I'll tell you all about her. Perhaps it is only fair to say that she is not so terribly imaginary as she might be."
"Of course not—if you have her picture," was the quiet reply; and a little while after that she told him she was sleepy again, and that he might take the gun and go after a rabbit if that was what he wished to do.
She did go to sleep, but Prime did not go hunting until after the midday meal; and thus it happened that when Lucetta awoke, along in the afternoon, she found herself alone. For an hour or two she was content to lie quietly, waiting for Prime to return,but when the afternoon drew to a close and he still failed to put in an appearance she got up, rather totteringly, and replenished the camp-fire.
Another hour passed and she began to grow anxious. The spruce grove was plunged in shadows, but the sun had not yet set for the upper regions of the air. By the time it was fully dark she knew that Prime was lost, and in this new terror she was able to forget, in some measure at least, the effects of her late illness. Bestirring herself once more, she put more wood on the fire, hoping that it might blaze high enough to serve as a signal for the wanderer.
It was all she could do, and having done it she sat down to wait, her anxiety growing sharper as the evening wore on and there was neither sight nor sound to foreshadow the lost one's return.
Ifshe had not known it before, Lucetta was to learn now that sickness of any sort is but a poor preparation for a battle of anxiety and endurance. On the one other occasion when she had been thrown upon her own resources Prime had been at least visibly present, and his helplessness had given her strength to fight off the terrors. But now she was alone and the terrors pressed thickly.
What if something had happened to the rabbit-hunter? She knew his utter lack of gun dexterity, and her terrified imagination conjured up harrowing pictures of the missing one lying wounded and helpless in some distant forest solitude, a victim of his unselfish effort to provide not for his own needs but for hers. The thought was a keen torture, but she could not banish it, and as the hours lengthened it threatened to drive her mad. There was nothing she could do saveto keep the fire burning brightly, and this she did, breaking the monotony of the unnerving suspense from time to time by collecting dry wood to heap upon the blaze.
It was nearly midnight before the agony came to a sudden end. She was lying on the blanket pallet, with her face hidden in the crook of an elbow when she looked up and saw Prime standing beside her. It was not in human nature to undergo the revulsion from the depths of despair calmly.
"Donald!" she shrieked faintly, and forgetting her weakness, she sprang up and flung herself into his arms, sobbing in an ecstasy of relief.
He took it in good brotherly fashion, and if the fraternal attitude was not strictly sincere, it was made to appear so.
"There, there, little woman," he comforted, "you mustn't turn loose that way—you'll make yourself sick again. It's all over now, and I got your rabbit. See, here it is"—drawing it from his pocket and dangling it before her as if it were a new toy and she a child to be hastily diverted.
The diversion was not needed; she wasfreeing herself from the clasp of the remaining reassuring arm, and her cheeks were aflame.
"I didn't know I could be so silly! Please don't hold it against me, Donald," she begged. "If you only knew what I have been through since it grew dark! You'll forgive me and—and not remember it after we—after we——"
His weariness fell from him like a castoff garment. "Not if you don't want me to, Lucetta. But it was rather—er—pleasant, you know—to find that some one really cared enough about what had become of me to—to sort of forget herself for a moment."
The firelight was strong, and if he saw the adoring look that flashed into the gray eyes he was magnanimous enough, or modest enough, to pass it over to the sudden transition from despair to relief.
"It must have been something fierce for you," he went on; "but I did the best I could after I had been idiotic enough to get lost. Of course, since I had the gun with me, it was hours before I got sight of a rabbit; and even then I had to shoot at half a dozenof them before I could manage to hit one. By that time it was getting on toward sunset, and I had lost the brook which I had taken for a guide."
"I knew you would," she broke in. "But that wasn't the worst of it. I kept imagining that you had shot yourself accidentally, and every time I closed my eyes I could see you lying wounded and helpless!"
"You poor little worrier!" he pitied; "I knew you would be scared stiff if I didn't get back by dark, and in my hurry I bore too far to the left; a great deal too far, as it turned out, for when I reached the river I recognized the place. It was just this side of the grove where we were camping when the canoe was stolen."
"Horrors!" she gasped faintly. "And you have walked all that distance?"
"No," he grinned; "I ran a good part of it. When I came in a few minutes ago I was dead from the waist down; but I am all right now. You sit down and drink broth while I skin this rabbit. It's a juicy one—as fat as butter."
Fifteen minutes later the rabbit was stewingin the larger skillet, and Prime found time to ask Lucetta how she was feeling.
"Just plain hungry," she returned. "The fever hasn't come back any more, and if I ever have a medicine-chest of my own there will be boneset in it; great, big, smelly packages of it. Aren't you going to let me make a bit of bread to eat with that delicious gravy broth?"
"If it won't tire you too much," he consented, and at that he sat back and watched her while she mixed the bread, a housewifely little figure kneeling before the fire and patting the dough into a cake with hands that not all the rough work of the adventure weeks had made misshapen.
Somewhat beyond this they made their post-midnight meal, and were once more light-hearted and care-free. In the aftermath of it, when Prime had lighted his homemade pipe, they were even buoyant enough to plan for the future.
"We'll go on again to-morrow, shan't we?" the young woman assumed. "We can't be so very far from the towns now, with the river grown so large."
"I fancy we are nearer than we thought we were," Prime replied. "Over to the west, where I went this afternoon, there is another and still larger river. On its banks the timber has all been cut off and there is nothing but second and third growth. It is a safe bet that the two rivers come together a little below here, and if we are not stopped by our inability to cross the bigger river——"
"We are not going to be stopped," she prophesied hopefully. "I have a feeling that our troubles, or the worst of them, are all over."
Prime smiled. "The joyous reaction is still with you, but that is all right and just as it should be. We'll keep on going until we come to a town or a railroad, and then——"
She was sufficiently light-hearted to laugh with him when he glanced down at his torn and travel-worn clothes.
"And then we shall be arrested for tramps," she finished for him. "There is one consolation—neither of us will look any worse than the other."
"When we find a town we shall find clothes," he asserted. "Luckily we have English money to buy with."
"Would you—would you spend that money?" she asked, half fearfully.
"Why not? I'd hock the dead men themselves if we had them and there wasn't any other way to raise the wind. But I have some good, old-fashioned American money, too."
"I shall have to borrow of you when we get to where we can buy things," she said, with a sudden access of shyness that was new to him. "I had a purse with a little money in it that night at Quebec, but it disappeared."
"What is mine is yours, Lucetta; surely you don't have to be told that, at this stage of the game."
"Thank you," she said softly. "That goes with everything else you have done for me." Then, after a pause: "Will you tell the other girl about this—about this adventure of ours, Donald?"
"Don't you think I ought to tell her? Isn't it her right to know?"
She took time to consider.
"I'm not sure; women are singular about some things; they don't always understand. Perhaps they don't care to understand—too much. Then there is always the difficulty of explaining things just as they were. I could tell better if I knew the girl. Is she young?"
"Why, y-yes—some years younger than I am. But she is all kinds of sensible."
"Is she in New York?"
"No," he answered soberly. "She is not in New York."
She took it as a hint that she was not to ask any more questions about the girl and changed the subject abruptly.
"Shall you go and look for Mr. Grider after we find a railroad?"
"Not immediately. I shall first see you safe at home in your girls'-school town in Ohio," he assured her firmly.
"Oh, that won't be necessary," she protested. "I have travelled alone many times. And I have my return ticket; or I shall have it when I get back to Quebec."
"Nevertheless, I am going home withyou," Prime insisted stubbornly. "It is up to me to see you out of this, and I shall make a job of it while I am about it. When it is done I shall come back to Canada to find out who shanghaied us and what for. And when I find the people who did it they are going to pay for it."
"Even if they include Mr. Grider?"
"Yes, by Jove! Even if the man higher up happens to be Watson Grider. I don't mind the kidnapping so much for myself, but the man doesn't live, Lucetta, who can make you go through what you have gone through in the past month and get away with it."
"I don't ask you to fight for me, Donald," she interposed. "And, besides, it hasn't been all bad—or has it?"
"We have agreed every little while, between jolts, that it hasn't. I'll go further now, and say that it is the finest, truest, happiest thing that has ever happened to me—hardships and all."
"You mean because it has given you new working material?"
"No; I wasn't thinking so much of that,though the new material, and more especially the new angle, are worth something, of course. But there are bigger consequences than these—for me—Lucetta." Then he broke off and plunged headlong into something else. "How much of an income should a man have before he can ask a girl to marry him? Does the Domestic Science course include any such practical data as that?"
"Is that all you are waiting for?" she inquired, ignoring his question. "Have you asked the girl?"
"No; I haven't asked her yet. And the money is the main thing that I shall be waiting for from this time on."
"I should say it would depend entirely upon the girl—upon what she had been used to."
"I think—she hasn't—been used to having things made so very soft for her," he answered rather uncertainly. "But she has at least one ambition that is going to ask for a good chunk of money at first, until she—until she gets ready to—to settle down."
"And that is——?"
The suggestive query was never answered.