either side of him and started to sit up.

"Oh, don't!" she cried, setting the bowl on the floor and gently
pushing him back on his pillow; "you must not!"

He laughed. "Just like a woman. You surely don't think I'm going to
lie here for a week, like a sick cat, for such a little scratch. I've
lost some blood, that's all." And before she could prevent it, he had
drawn himself up and was smiling broadly.

"I can't look after sick folks," she said, in despair. "The doctor
will blame me."

"I heard him say if you hadn't held my cut so well I'd have bled to
death."

"Anybody else could have done it."

"Nobody else didn't."

"Do you want the gruel? Take it quick, and lie down again; you'll lose
strength sitting up."

"You'll have to feed me," he said, opening his mouth. "I'm too blamed
weak to sit up without propping with my hands, and they don't seem very
good supports. Look how that one is wobbling."

She sat down on the edge of the bed, and without a word placed the bowl
in her lap and her arm round him. Then neither spoke as she filled the
spoon and held it to his lips. She felt him trying to steady his arms
to keep his weight from her.

"It's really good," he said, as she filled the spoon the second time,
"I had no idea I was so hungry; you say you made it?"

"Yes; there now, I'll have to wipe your chin; you ought not to talk
when you are eating."

For several minutes neither spoke. He finished the bowl of gruel and
lay down again.

"I feel as mean as a dog," he said, as she rose and drew the cover over
him; "here I am being nursed by the very fellow's sweetheart I tried my
level best to do up."

She turned and placed the bowl on the table, and then went to the fire.

"I heard you were his girl last night," he went on. "Well, I'm glad I
didn't kill him. I wouldn't have tried in anything but self-defence,
for even if he did use a gun and knife, when I had none, he's got
bulldog pluck, and plenty of it. Do you know, I felt like mashing the
head of that sheriff for beating him like he did."

She sat down before the fire, but soon rose again. "If I stay here,"
she said, abruptly, and rather sharply, "you'll keep talking, and not
sleep at all. I'm going into the next room--the parlor. If you want
anything, call me and I'll come."

A few minutes after she left him he fell asleep. She put a piece of
wood on the fire in the next room and sat down before it. She had left
the door of his