the morning. Can you come over now before you
leave?"

Helen sat up a little higher on her cot, and her cheeks flamed. Mrs.
Douglas looked at her, hesitated, and then answered Mrs. Van Shaw.

CHAPTER XVII

"WHAT does your son want to say to my daughter?" asked Esther. The
thought of a dramatic interview between them was exceedingly distasteful
to her.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Van Shaw guardedly. "He has been begging me to
come and see you. Oh, he is very ill!" and at that the mother in her,
mistaken and distorted though it were, in her training of the boy, broke
down and she began to sob.

Esther was moved at the sight, and after a moment she said gently, "We
are all so sorry for you, Mrs. Van Shaw. The shock of it all must have
been terrible for you."

"I am just about prostrated by it. Mr. Van Shaw is expected to-day. He
was in New York when the news reached him. But it surely is not asking
anything improper to ask Miss Douglas to see my boy before you leave. We
shall be obliged to remain here in this dreadful place until the doctor
says Ross can be moved."

"Will you see him?" asked Esther, turning to Helen, and speaking
quietly.

"Yes, I am willing to go," replied Helen in a very low voice. She
dreaded and at the same time courted the interview. It had just the
tinge of dramatic setting in it that appealed to her highly romantic
imagination. She did not know what he wanted to say to her and she was
not in the least prepared for the interview. But it seemed to her that
it would be a piece of foolish affectation to refuse his request and
especially since she would in all probability not have any occasion to
meet him again.

Esther went out of the tent and in a few words told Paul of Mrs. Van
Shaw's visit and its object. Helen would have to be carried over to the
government farmer's house. Clifford called up two of the Indians and
with their help, he and Paul carried Helen over. Bauer, who was hardly
yet fit to sit up, but had already climbed into his place in one of the
chuck wagons, saw the whole thing from where he sat, and again his mind
went into a whirl with jealousy and anger. If Helen's mother had told
her of Van Shaw's character, how could the girl, in spite of all that,
go and see him now? It seemed to him like an indication of something
coarse and low in Helen's nature, something which contradicted his pure
thought of her. He could not understand it, and being ignorant of the
fact that Hel