y 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, and thus 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