in the morning."

The girl merely smiled and went out with him. She was aware that it
was in some respects an unusual thing which she was doing, but that
did not greatly trouble her. They are not very conventional people in
that country.

CHAPTER III

WAYNEFLEET'S RANCH

Though he afterwards endeavoured to recall them, Nasmyth had never
more than a faint and shadowy recollection of the next few days.
During most of the time, he fancied he was back in England, and the
girl he had left there seemed to be hovering about him. Now and then,
she would lay gentle hands upon him, and her soothing touch would send
him off to sleep again; but there was a puzzling change in her
appearance. He remembered her as slight in figure--sylph-like he had
sometimes called her--fastidious and dainty, and always artistically
dressed. Now, however, she seemed to have grown taller, stronger, more
reserved, and, as he vaguely realized, more capable, while her
garments were of a different and coarser fashion. What was still more
curious, she did not seem to recognize her name, though he addressed
her by it now and then. He pondered over the matter drowsily once or
twice, and then ceased to trouble himself about it. There were several
other things that appeared at least as incomprehensible.

After a long time, however, his senses came back to him, and one
evening, as he lay languidly looking about him in his rude wooden
bunk, he endeavoured to recall what had passed since he left the
loggers' camp. The little room was comfortably warm, and a plain tin
lamp burned upon what was evidently a home-made table. There was
nothing, except a rifle, upon the rough log walls, and nothing upon
the floor, which was, as usual, rudely laid with split boards, for
dressed lumber is costly in the Bush. Looking through the open door
into the general living-room, which was also lighted, he could see a
red twinkle beneath the register of the stove, beside which a woman
was sitting sewing. She was a hard-featured, homely person in coarsely
fashioned garments, which did not seem to fit her well, and Nasmyth
felt slightly disconcerted when he glanced at her, for she was not the
woman whom he had expected to see. Then his glance rested on a man,
who had also figured in his uncertain memories, and now sat not far
away from him. The man, who was young, was dressed in plain blue duck,
and, though Nasmyth noticed that his hands were hard, and that he had
broken