atches just then and gave him a box. He was almost
pathetically grateful. Tish was still staring at him. To find on Thunder
Cloud Mountain a young man who quoted Shakespeare and had lost
everything but his good name--even Stevenson could hardly have had a
more unusual adventure.

"What are you going to do with the matches?" she demanded as he limped
to the cave mouth.

"Light a fire if I can find any wood dry enough to light. If I can't----
Well, you remember the little match-seller in Hans Christian Andersen's
story, who warmed her fingers with her own matches until they were all
gone and she froze to death!"

Hans Christian Andersen and Shakespeare!

"Can't you find a cave?" asked Tish.

"I had a cave," he said, "but----"

"But what?"

"Three charming women found it while I was out on the mountainside. They
needed the shelter more than I, and so----"

"What!" Tish exclaimed. "This is your cave?"

"Not at all; it is yours. The fact that I had been stopping in it gave
me no right that I was not happy to waive."

"There was nothing of yours in it," Tish said suspiciously.

"As I have told you, I have lost everything but my good name and my
sprained ankle. I had them both out with me when you----"

"We will leave immediately," said Tish. "Aggie, bring Modestine."

"Ladies, ladies!" cried the young man. "Would you make me more wretched
than I already am? I assure you, if you leave I shall not come back. I
should be too unhappy."

Well, nothing could have been fairer than his attitude. He wished us to
stay on. But as he limped a step or two into the night Aggie turned on
us both in a fury.

"That's it," she said. "Let him go, of course. So long as you are dry
and comfortable it doesn't matter about him."

"Well, you are dry and comfortable too," snapped Tish. "What do you
expect us to do?"

"Call him back. Let him sleep here by the fire. Give him something to
eat; he looks starved. If you're afraid it isn't proper we can hang our
kimonos up for curtains and make him a separate room."

But we did not need to call him. He had limped back and stood in the
firelight again.

"You--you haven't seen anything of the bandits, have you?" he asked.

"Bandits!"

"Train robbers. I thought you had probably run across them."

All at once we remembered the green automobile and the four men with
guns. We told him about it and he nodded.

"That would be they," he said. As Tish remarked later, we knew from that