was in her cheeks, but she
thanked the man, and gathering up her papers hastened down the gangway
at the last moment. She stopped a moment breathless when she reached
the wharf and saw Deringham and his daughter drive away, and shut one
little hand. Then she laughed, and turned towards the city with a
gesture of impatience. "The two dollars are badly needed--and I'm a
little fool, but it hurt, all of it," she said.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE AWAKENING

The snow had ceased an hour or two earlier, and the moon shone down
upon the glistening pines that shook off their white covering under a
bitter wind, when a wagon came lurching into the Somasco valley. Four
weary horses floundered in front of it, a thin white steam rising from
them into the nipping air, and Okanagan swayed half asleep upon the
driving-seat, growling inarticulate objurgations when the vehicle sank
creaking into a hollow he could not see. He had, wearing out several
horses during the journey, driven close upon a hundred miles through
the frost and snow, and had ceased to encourage his companions during
the last hour or so. In fact, he was almost as incapable of speech
just then as they were of comprehending him.

They had, however, won his admiration, which he was somewhat slow of
according city folk, for although there had been times when, as he
dragged the worn-out team up steep hillsides through the blinding snow,
he almost despaired of reaching Somasco, he had heard no complaint from
either Deringham or his daughter. The man had helped him where he
could, and when there was nothing that he could do sat silent beside
him smoking tranquilly, while, with the flung-up snow whirling about
them, the team went floundering down almost precipitous gully or rutted
declivity, where a stumble would have hurled them all into the tops of
the pines below. Nor had a cry escaped the girl who sat behind them,
gripping the side of the bouncing vehicle, when once a horse went down,
and on another occasion the wagon left the trail and drove into a
hemlock. Okanagan also remembered that though it had been necessary to
lift her down when twice they stopped to change the team at a lonely
ranch, she rose smiling with blue lips when it was time to go on again.

"Yes, sir," he afterwards said to Seaforth, "there wasn't any weakening
down in either of them, and the girl's a daisy."

Deringham, however, was now sitting amidst the straw in the bottom of
the wagon, wi