as much comfort for her father
as the circumstances would permit. She removed his boot and stocking,
and, under his direction, slit the leg of his trousers above the
injury. It was bleeding a little. In the large room of the house she
found a pail with water, and she bathed the wound, wiping it with her
handkerchief, and mingling a tear or two with the warm blood that
dripped from it.

"You're good stuff," her father said, pressing the fingers of her
unoccupied hand. "Now, if you could find a clean cloth to bandage it--"

She looked about the place, somewhat hopelessly. Her expedition to the
main part of the house, when she had found the water pail, had not
reassured her as to the housekeeping of the Eldens. Her father read
her perplexity.

"It seems as though you would be in charge here for awhile, Reenie," he
said, "so you will save time by getting acquainted at once with your
equipment. Look the house over and see what you have to work with."

"Well, I can commence here," she answered. "This is Dave's room. I
suppose I should say Mr. Elden's, but--what was it he said about
'mistering'? It would be splendid if it were cleaned up," she
continued, with kindling enthusiasm. "These bare logs, bare floors,
bare rafters--we've got back to essentials, anyway. And that's his
bed." She surveyed a framework of spruce poles, on which lay an old
straw mattress and some very grey blankets. "I suppose he is very
tired when he goes to bed," she said, drolly, as though that could be
the only explanation of sleep amid such surroundings. "And the walls
give one a clue to the artistic side of his nature." A poster
advertising a summer fair, with a prodigious bull occupying the centre
of the picture, hung on one wall, and across from it a lithograph of a
young woman, with very bright clothing and very alabaster skin and very
decollete costume tendered a brand of beer with the assurance that it
goes to the spot. "I ought to drape it," she said, and the curl on her
lip showed smooth white teeth.

"I was forgetting I have to find a bandage for you," she suddenly
remembered. "There's his trunk; it might produce something, but we
will save it for a last resort. Now I will explore this main room,
which I suppose is the kitchen, dining room, living room, everything."

In the south end of the larger room stood a fireplace, crudely made of
slabs of native rock. The fires of many winters had crumbled the rock,
so that i