nails, there was something in his bronzed face that suggested
mental capacity.

"I suppose," the sick man said, "you are the doctor who has evidently
taken care of me?"

He was not quite himself yet, and he spoke clean colloquial English,
without any trace of the Western accentuation he usually considered it
advisable to adopt, though, as a matter of fact, the accent usually
heard on the Pacific slope is not unduly marked. The other man
naturally noticed it, and laughed somewhat curiously.

"I have some knowledge of medicine and surgery," Gordon answered. "Now
and then I make use of it, though I don't, as a rule, get a fee." Then
he looked rather hard at Nasmyth. "Quite a few of us find it advisable
to let our professions go when we come to this country."

Nasmyth nodded, for this was a thing he had discovered already. Many
of the comrades he had made there were outcasts--men outside the
pale--and they were excellent comrades, too.

"Well," he said, "I have evidently been very sick. How did I get here?
I don't seem to remember."

"Miss Waynefleet found you lying in the snow in the clearing."

"Ah!" said Nasmyth--"a tall girl with a quiet voice, big brown eyes,
and splendid hair?"

Gordon smiled. "Well," he said, "that's quite like her."

"Where is she now?" asked Nasmyth; and though he was very feeble
still, there was a certain expectancy in his manner.

"In the barn, I believe. The working oxen have to be fed. It's very
probable that you will see her in the next half-hour. As to your other
question--you were very sick indeed--pneumonia. Once or twice it
seemed a sure thing that you'd slip through our fingers. Where were
you coming from when you struck the clearing?"

Nasmyth, who had no reason for reticence, and found his mind rapidly
growing clearer, briefly related what had led him to set out on his
journey through the Bush, and his companion nodded.

"It's very much as I expected," he said. "They paid you off before you
left that logging camp?"

"They did," said Nasmyth, who was pleased to recall the fact. "I had
thirty-two dollars in my belt."

His companion looked at him steadily. "When you came here you hadn't a
belt on. There was not a dollar in your pockets, either."

This was naturally a blow to Nasmyth. He realized that it would
probably be several weeks at least before he was strong enough to work
again, and he had evidently been a charge upon these strangers for
some little time. Still,