alked, and turned
some ham in the skillet, and got the children up before the fire,
and dropped some eggs in water,--all with a rapidity that bewildered
Henderson.

"How long have you been alone?" he asked, softly.

"Three months before baby was born, and he's five months old now.
I--I--you think I can get on here, don't you? There was nothing else to
do."

She was folding another blanket over the sleeping baby now, and the
action brought to her guest the recollection of a thousand tender
moments of his dimly remembered youth.

"You'll get on if we have anything to do with it," he cried, suppressing
an oath with difficulty, just from pure emotion.

And he told her about the three Johns' ranch, and found it was only
three miles distant, and that both were on the same road; only her
cabin, having been put up during the past week, had of course been
unknown to him. So it ended in a sort of compact that they were to help
each other in such ways as they could. Meanwhile the fire got genial,
and the coffee filled the cabin with its comfortable scent, and all of
them ate together quite merrily, Henderson cutting up the ham for the
youngsters; and he told how he chanced to come out; and she entertained
him with stories of what she thought at first when she was brought a
bride to Hamilton, the adjacent village, and convulsed him with stories
of the people, whom she saw with humorous eyes.

Henderson marvelled how she could in those few minutes have rescued the
cabin from the desolation in which the storm had plunged it. Out of the
window he could see the stricken grasses dripping cold moisture, and the
sky still angrily plunging forward like a disturbed sea. Not a tree or
a house broke the view. The desolation of it swept over him as it never
had before. But within the little ones were chattering to themselves in
odd baby dialect, and the mother was laughing with them.

"Women aren't always useless," she said, at parting; "and you tell your
chums that when they get hungry for a slice of homemade bread they can
get it here. And the next time they go by, I want them to stop in and
look at the children. It'll do them good. They may think they won't
enjoy themselves, but they will."

"Oh, I'll answer for that!" cried he, shaking hands with her. "I'll tell
them we have just the right sort of a neighbor."

"Thank you," said she, heartily. "And you may tell them that her name is
Catherine Ford."

Once at home, he told his