eard this incredulous query just an instant before she saw Wilson
at the far end of the room, lying under the light of a window. The
inside of the cabin seemed vague and unfamiliar.

"I surely did," she replied, advancing. "How are you?"

"Oh, I'm all right. Tickled to death, right now. Only, I hate to have
you see this battered mug of mine."

"You needn't--care," said Columbine, unsteadily. And indeed, in that
first glance she did not see him clearly. A mist blurred her sight and
there was a lump in her throat. Then, to recover herself, she looked
around the cabin.

"Well--Wils Moore--if this isn't fine!" she ejaculated, in amaze and
delight. Columbine sustained an absolute surprise. A magic hand had
transformed the interior of that rude old prospector's abode. A
carpenter and a mason and a decorator had been wonderfully at work. From
one end to the other Columbine gazed; from the big window under which
Wilson lay on a blanketed couch to the open fireplace where Wade grinned
she looked and looked, and then up to the clean, aspen-poled roof and
down to the floor, carpeted with deer hides. The chinks between the logs
of the walls were plastered with red clay; the dust and dirt were gone;
the place smelled like sage and wood-smoke and fragrant, frying meat.
Indeed, there were a glowing bed of embers and a steaming kettle and a
smoking pot; and the way the smoke and steam curled up into the gray old
chimney attested to its splendid draught. In each corner hung a
deer-head, from the antlers of which depended accoutrements of a
cowboy--spurs, ropes, belts, scarfs, guns. One corner contained
cupboard, ceiling high, with new, clean doors of wood, neatly made; and
next to it stood a table, just as new. On the blank wall beyond that
were pegs holding saddles, bridles, blankets, clothes.

"He did it--all this inside," burst out Moore, delighted with her
delight. "Quicker than a flash! Collie, isn't this great? I don't mind
being down on my back. And he says they call him Hell-Bent Wade. I call
him Heaven-Sent Wade!"

When Columbine turned to the hunter, bursting with her pleasure and
gratitude, he suddenly dropped the forked stick he used as a lift, and
she saw his hand shake when he stooped to recover it. How strangely that
struck her!

"Ben, it's perfectly possible that you've been sent by Heaven," she
remarked, with a humor which still held gravity in it.

"Me! A good angel? That'd be a new job for Bent Wade," he repl