back together.

"It's a pity Steve is so sensitive," said Katrine, plaintively. "I just
saved him, and his house, and his precious gold, and everything,
to-night, and he does not like me a bit for it."

"I think you are a very brave little girl," said Talbot, softly.

"Do you?" returned Katrine, in a pleased voice; and Talbot felt that she
turned her face and looked up at him in the darkness. "Steve and I don't
fit very well, do we?" she added, with a sigh; "and he does not fit this
life. Somehow, I don't believe we shall ever leave this place alive--I
have a presentiment we shan't. You will--you'll make a success and go
back; but we shan't."

Talbot did not answer, as they were at the cabin.

Stephen met them at the door as they came in, with a white stricken
face. "Where have you put it?" he asked in an awed, trembling whisper.

"Down the gulch," replied Katrine, composedly. "Now, Steve, you're not
to worry about it any more--it was a necessity."

She glanced round the room and saw that Stephen had been too much shaken
to think of putting it in order. The coffee-pot stood where she had left
it, and the coffee was boiling over and wasting itself in the fire. She
ran to it, took it off, and began pouring it into the cups on the table;
as she did so the men noticed blood dripping from her wrist into one of
the saucers.

"Oh, yes," she said indifferently, in answer to Stephen's startled
exclamation, "I thought I felt my sleeve getting very damp and sticky;
there's a graze on the shoulder, I think, and the blood has been
crawling slowly down my arm, tickling me horribly. Let's see how it
looks!"

She unfastened her bodice and took it off, seemingly unconscious of
Talbot's presence. He stood silently by the hearth watching her, and
thought, as he saw her bare white arms and full, strong white neck, how
well she would look in a London ball-room. Stephen, all nervous anxiety,
was examining her shoulder. A bullet had gone over it, leaving a furrow
in the flesh, where the blood welled up slowly. Katrine turned her head
aside and regarded it out of one eye, as a bird does. Stephen bent over
her and kissed her, murmuring incoherent words of remorseful sorrow.
Katrine flung her arms round him and laughed.

"Why, I am delighted! it's been quite worth it, the fun we've had
to-night. That's all right--it will be healed in a couple of days; just
tie it up with your handkerchief."

It was an easy place to bind, by passing