gone, Tish
promised to go home the moment the rain stopped and the roads dried.
Aggie and I went to her together and implored her.

But, as it turned out, we did not go home for some days, and when we
did----

By Thursday evening Tish was much better. She ate a little potato salad
and we sat round the fire, listening to her telling how they had found
the runaways in this very cave.

"They had taken all the hatchets and kitchen knives they could find and
started to hunt Indians," she was saying. "They got as far as this cave,
and one evening about this time they were sitting round the fire like
this when a black bear----"

We all heard it at the same moment. Something was scrambling and
climbing up the mountainside to the cave. Tish had her rifle to her
shoulder in a second, and Aggie shut her eyes. But it was not a bear
that appeared at the mouth of the cave and stood blinking in the light.
It was a young man!

"I beg your pardon," he said, peering into the firelight, "but--you
don't happen to have a spare box of matches, do you?"

Tish lowered the rifle.

"Matches!" she said. "Why--er--certainly. Aggie, give the gentleman some
matches."

The young man had edged into the cave by that time and we saw that he
was limping and leaning on a stick. He looked round the cave approvingly
at our three sleeping-bags in an orderly row, with our toilet things set
out on a clean towel on a flat stone and a mirror hung above, and at
our lantern on another stone, with magazines and books grouped round it.
Aggie, finding some trailing arbutus just outside the cave that day, had
got two or three empty salmon cans about filled with it, and the fur rug
from Tish's sleeping-bag lay in front of the fire. The effect was really
civilized.

"It looks like a drawing room," said the young man, with a long breath.
"It's the first dry spot I've seen for two days, and it looks like
Heaven to a lost soul."

"Where are you stopping?"

"I am not stopping. I am on a walking tour, or was until I hurt my leg."

"Don't you think you'd better wait until things dry up?"

"And starve?" he asked.

"The woods are full of nuts and berries," said Tish.

"Not in May."

"And there is plenty of game."

"Yes, if one has a weapon," he replied. "I lost my gun when I fell into
Thunder Creek; in fact, I lost everything except my good name. What's
that thing of Shakespeare's: 'Who steals my purse steals trash, ... but
he----'"

Aggie found the m