oy and she a child to be hastily
diverted.

The diversion was not needed; she was freeing herself from the clasp of
the remaining reassuring arm, and her cheeks were aflame.

"I didn't know I could be so silly! Please don't hold it against me,
Donald," she begged. "If you only knew what I have been through since it
grew dark! You'll forgive me and--and not remember it after we--after
we----"

His weariness fell from him like a castoff garment. "Not if you don't
want me to, Lucetta. But it was rather--er--pleasant, you know--to find
that some one really cared enough about what had become of me to--to
sort of forget herself for a moment."

The firelight was strong, and if he saw the adoring look that flashed
into the gray eyes he was magnanimous enough, or modest enough, to pass
it over to the sudden transition from despair to relief.

"It must have been something fierce for you," he went on; "but I did the
best I could after I had been idiotic enough to get lost. Of course,
since I had the gun with me, it was hours before I got sight of a
rabbit; and even then I had to shoot at half a dozen of them before I
could manage to hit one. By that time it was getting on toward sunset,
and I had lost the brook which I had taken for a guide."

"I knew you would," she broke in. "But that wasn't the worst of it. I
kept imagining that you had shot yourself accidentally, and every time I
closed my eyes I could see you lying wounded and helpless!"

"You poor little worrier!" he pitied; "I knew you would be scared stiff
if I didn't get back by dark, and in my hurry I bore too far to the
left; a great deal too far, as it turned out, for when I reached the
river I recognized the place. It was just this side of the grove where
we were camping when the canoe was stolen."

"Horrors!" she gasped faintly. "And you have walked all that distance?"

"No," he grinned; "I ran a good part of it. When I came in a few minutes
ago I was dead from the waist down; but I am all right now. You sit down
and drink broth while I skin this rabbit. It's a juicy one--as fat as
butter."

Fifteen minutes later the rabbit was stewing in the larger skillet, and
Prime found time to ask Lucetta how she was feeling.

"Just plain hungry," she returned. "The fever hasn't come back any more,
and if I ever have a medicine-chest of my own there will be boneset in
it; great, big, smelly packages of it. Aren't you going to let me make a
bit of bread to eat with t