y to understand. Nod
your head if you do. Do you?"

Her speech was rapid and impatient, while she listened each moment lest a
step sound on the stairs again. But in all her eagerness to hear she never
looked away from his face, and she uttered a low exclamation of gladness
when the man's head bent slowly in assent.

"Oh, I am so glad--so glad! You will get well; you must! Listen! I know
you now, and why you looked at me so. You think you saw me up at
Revelstoke--I think I remember your face there--and you don't trust me.
You are looking for that man--the man that took her away from you. You
think I could find a trail to him; but you are wrong. He is dead, and I
know she is--I _know_! Your name was the last word she said--'Joe.' She
wanted you to forgive her, and not cross _his_ path. You don't believe me,
perhaps; but it is all true. I went to the camp with--with the boy she
wrote of. She talked of you to me. I had word to give you if we ever met.
But how was I to know that Jim Harris was the man--the same man? Do you
hear--do you believe me?"

Those burning eyes--eyes in which all of life in him seemed
concentrated--looked out on her from the pale, strange face; looked on her
until her own cheeks grew colorless, for there was something awful in the
searching regard of the man who was but half alive.

"See!" she said, and slipped from her belt a package in which paper
rustled, "I've had that plan of the gold find ever since--since she died.
She gave it to me, in case you should be--as you are, and no one to look
after it for you. Or, if you should go under, she said, I was to look it
up. And I started to look it up--yes, I did; but things were against me,
and I let it go for a while. But now, listen! If you get well, it means
money must do it. See? Dan hasn't very much--not enough to float you long.
Now, I've thought it all out. You give up the notion of looking for that
man, who wasn't worth a shot of powder when he was alive, and worth less
now. It's that notion that's been eating the life out of you. Oh, I've
thought it all out! Now you just turn honest prospector, like you was when
that man Ingalls first spotted you. I'm only a girl, but I'll try to help
make amends for the wrongs he did you. I'll go partners with you. Look!
here is the plan; and I'm almost sure I know where the two little streams
meet. I've thought of it a heap; but the face of--of that dead girl, kept
me from doing anything till I had either fo