placed her in.

Her laugh and his own movement brought Wade fully to himself. She
perceived that his look was transferring her from the order of scalping
squaws to her proper place as a beautiful young woman of the highest
civilization, not smeared with vermilion, but blushing celestial rosy.

"Thank you," said Wade. "I can sit up now without assistance." And he
regretted profoundly that good breeding obliged him to say so.

She withdrew her arms. He rested on the ice,--posture of the Dying
Gladiator. She made an effort to be cool and distant as usual; but it
would not do. This weak mighty man still interested her. It was still
her business to be strength to him.

He made a feeble attempt to wipe away the drops of blood from his
forehead with his handkerchief.

"Let me be your surgeon!" said she.

She produced her own folded handkerchief,--M. D. were the initials in
the corner,--and neatly and tenderly turbaned him.

Wade submitted with delight to this treatment. A tumble with such
trimmings was luxury indeed.

"Who would not break his head," he thought, "to have these delicate
fingers plying about him, and this pure, noble face so close to his?
What a queenly indifferent manner she has! What a calm brow! What honest
eyes! What a firm nose! What equable cheeks! What a grand indignant
mouth! Not a bit afraid of me! She feels that I am a gentleman and will
not presume."

"There!" said she, drawing back. "Is that comfortable?"

"Luxury!" he ejaculated with fervor.

"I am afraid I am to blame for your terrible fall."

"No,--my own clumsiness and that oar-blade are in fault."

"If you feel well enough to be left alone, I will skate off and call my
friends."

"Please do not leave me quite yet!" says Wade, entirely satisfied with
the _tete-a-tete_.

"Ah! here comes Mr. Skerrett round the Point!" she said,--and sprang up,
looking a little guilty.

CHAPTER IX.

LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE.

Peter Skerrett came sailing round the purple rocks of his Point, skating
like a man who has been in the South of Europe for two winters.

He was decidedly Anglicized in his whiskers, coat, and shoes. Otherwise
he in all respects repeated his well-known ancestor, Skerrett of the
Revolution; whose two portraits--1. A ruddy hero in regimentals, in
Gilbert Stuart's early brandy-and-water manner; 2. A rosy sage in
senatorials, in Stuart's later claret-and-water manner--hang in his
descendant's dining-room.

Peter's fir