Catherine raised her finger. She could hear Henderson's voice within;
it was pitiably querulous. He was half sitting up in his bunk, and
Gillispie had just handed him a plate on which two cakes were swimming
in black molasses and pork gravy. Henderson looked at it a moment; then
over his face came a look of utter despair. He dropped his head in his
arms and broke into uncontrolled crying.

"Oh, my God, Gillispie," he sobbed, "I shall die out here in this
wretched hole! I want my mother. Great God, Gillispie, am I going to die
without ever seeing my mother?"

Gillispie, maddened at this anguish, which he could in no way alleviate,
sought comfort by first lighting his pipe and then taking his revolver
out of his hip-pocket and playing with it. Henderson continued to shake
with sobs, and Catherine, who had never before in her life heard a man
cry, leaned against the door for a moment to gather courage. Then she
ran into the house quickly, laughing as she came. She took Henderson's
arms away from his face and laid him back on the pillow, and she stooped
over him and kissed his forehead in the most matter-of-fact way.

"That's what your mother would do if she were here," she cried, merrily.
"Where's the water?"

She washed his face and hands a long time, till they were cool and his
convulsive sobs had ceased. Then she took a slice of thin bread from her
basket and a spoonful of amber jelly. She beat an egg into some milk and
dropped a little liquor within it, and served them together on the first
clean napkin that had been in the cabin of the three Johns since it was
built.

At this the great fool on the bed cried again, only quietly, tears
of weak happiness running from his feverish eyes. And Catherine
straightened the disorderly cabin. She came every day for two weeks, and
by that time Henderson, very uncertain as to the strength of his legs,
but once more accoutred in his native pluck, sat up in a chair, for
which she had made clean soft cushions, writing a letter to his mother.
The floor was scrubbed; the cabin had taken to itself cupboards made
of packing-boxes; it had clothes-presses and shelves; curtains at the
windows; boxes for all sort of necessaries, from flour to tobacco; and
a cook-book on the wall, with an inscription within which was more
appropriate than respectful.

The day that she announced that she would have no further call to come
back, Waite, who was looking after the house while Gillispie was