f Aurora; but she nursed him with a devotion that
overlooked nothing, and Mrs. Kyley, and Ben, and the business were all
sacrificed to the patient's needs. Mrs. Kyley and Ben made the sacrifice
gladly, the former because of the big soft heart she hid under her
formidable bulk, and Ben because gall and wormwood were sweet compared
with the bitterness he felt in being one of the many whose neglect had
contributed to the sacrifice of the rebels in the stockade. Business was
practically suspended in the shanty while Done lay in the adjoining tent,
only peaceful drinkers being permitted to refresh themselves with Mary's
wonderful rum. Mrs. Ben, too, was indefatigable in her care of the
wounded man; but Aurora was jealous of her labour of love, and Mary was
sometimes compelled to force her to take rest, and to go out in the open
air and make some effort to drive the pallor from her cheeks.

Aurora's beauty was entirely the beauty of perfect health and fine
vitality; under the influence of her long labours and the wearing anxiety
she endured her good looks faded. She was apparently years older than she
had seemed a month before.

'Your prettiness is all dying out of you, dear,' said Mary; 'you must
rest yourself, you must go into the air and let the roses freshen again,
or the boy won't look at you when he wakes.'

''Twill all come back fast enough when he is well,' Aurora would answer;
and it was into her pale face that Jim gazed with a long look of
childlike gravity when he opened his eyes to consciousness. She detected
the light of reason in his gaze, and her fingers clasped his hand. From
her face his eyes went slowly round the apartment, lingering with an
intent look on familiar objects, and then they went to the roof, and for
fully twenty minutes he watched the glowing patch where a sunbeam struck
the canvas cover, and there was in his face something of the wonder of a
creature born into a new world. Aurora was very grave: she did not smile,
her heart felt no elation--it was numb and old. Jim had a perplexing
sensation of feathery lightness; he felt like a frail snowflake in an
unsubstantial world. The bed under him was a bed of gossamer, if not
wholly visionary. He might fall through at any moment, and if he did he
might go on falling endlessly, a pinch of down in a bottomless abyss. He
tried to close his fingers on Aurora's strong hand. He knew she was
there, and she was real, substantial, although something of the wa