to build a fire in a
small cook-stove at one end of the room. "When I have sterilized these
instruments, young lady, we shall have a try for that bullet."

Jacqueline paled. "You mean you are going to--to cut him? Are you sure
you know how?"

He smiled at her, "Quite sure. We mountain teachers have opportunity to
learn many things."

"Including cooking," she said, with a wan attempt at raillery,
remembering Brother Bates' gossip.

"Including cooking," he admitted gravely. "Wait until this coffee has
boiled, and you shall see that I know one branch, at least, of my
profession thoroughly."

He brought her a steaming cup in a moment, which she drained gratefully.
"It's heavenly! May I have some more? Where did you learn to cook--from
books?"

"From necessity. When I first came to the mountains, it seemed safer to
cook than to be cooked for."

The girl was paying little attention. She watched Channing fearfully. He
was still unconscious, livid; but the school-teacher appeared to feel no
alarm. He went deftly and quite unhurried about his preparations,
getting out a hypodermic syringe, a bottle of chloroform, placing
certain instruments in the oven, others in boiling water.

Jacqueline shivered; but she went on with the conversation gallantly,
striving to face the situation as her mother or Jemima would have faced
it.

"I know one other man who can cook, but he's a minister, and they're
always different, somehow. He learned in the mountains, too, by the way,
because there was nobody but himself and his father to take care of his
sick mother. He learned all sorts of things to help her ... how to sew
on buttons, and mend clothes, and sweep--He can even darn stockings! And
he's not a bit ashamed of it."

"I should think," murmured the other, "that he might be even proud of
it. You find him unmanly, perhaps?"

"Unmanly! Philip?" The tone of her voice answered him. "Why, he's the
manliest man I know!"

The teacher said nothing further; but she got the impression that he was
listening, waiting for her to go on.

"Do you know," she said, "I feel as if I knew you, as if I might have
known you all my life. Have I never seen you before?"

"I think not," he replied, in a low voice.--Who can tell how much is
seen by little eyes newly opened upon the world? Perhaps vision is
clearer then than afterwards, when speech and sound and crowding
thoughts come to obscure it.

"Have you always lived in these mountains?"

H