lained.

As is the custom among bachelors who attend to their own domestic
affairs, they found the bed just as the foreman had stepped out of it
two weeks before. While Keller held the lantern, Phyllis made it up, and
again he saw that she was using her right hand very carefully and
flinching when it touched the blankets. Putting the lantern down on the
table, he walked up to her.

"I'll make the bed."

She stepped back, with a little laugh. "All right."

He made it, then turned to her at once.

"I want to see your hand."

She gave him the left one, even as he had done on the occasion of their
second meeting. He took it, and kept it.

"Now the other."

"What do you want with it?"

"Never mind." He reached down and drew it from the folds of her skirt,
where it had again fallen. Very gently he turned it so that the palm was
up. Ugly blisters and a red seam showed where she had burned herself. He
looked at her without speaking.

"It's nothing," she told him, a little hysterically.

For an instant her mind flashed back to the time when Buck Weaver had
drawn the cactus spines out of that same hand.

His voice was rough with feeling. "I can see it isn't. And you got it
for me--putting out the fire in my clothes. I reckon I cayn't thank you,
you poor little tortured hand." He lifted the fingers to his lips and
kissed them.

"Don't," she cried brokenly.

"Has it got to be this way always, Phyllie--you giving and me taking?"
His hand tightened on hers ever so slightly, and a spasm of pain shot
across her face. He looked at the burned fingers again tenderly. "Does
it hurt pretty bad, girl?"

"I wish it was ten times as bad!" she broke out, with a sob. "You saved
Phil's life--at the risk of your own. I wish I could tell you how I
feel, what I think of you, how splendid you are." In default of which
ability, she began to cry softly.

He wasted no more time. He did not ask her whether he might. With a
gesture, his arm went around her and drew her to him.

"Let me tell what I think of you, instead, girl o' mine. I cayn't tell
it, either, for that matter, but I reckon I can make out to show you,
honey."

"I didn't mean--that way," she protested, between laughter and tears.

"Well, that's the way I mean."

Neither spoke again for a minute. Than: "Do you really--love me?" she
murmured.

"What do you think?" He laughed with the sheer unconquerable boyish
delight in her.

"I think you're pretending right wel