ey--they--seemed to want him."

"I'll see to that," she answered. "Don't you let him know that
anything's the matter, or I'll never forgive you."

It was a command, and the glance that went with it accented its
authority.

The prairie schooner was now close at hand, and they straggled forward
to meet it, one behind the other, through the brushing of the knee-high
bushes. The child recognizing them ran screaming toward them, his
hands out-stretched, crying out their names. Lucy appeared at the
front of the wagon, climbed on the tongue and jumped down. She was
pale, the freckles on her fair skin showing like a spattering of brown
paint, her flaming hair slipped in a tousled coil to one side of her
head.

"It's you!" she cried. "Glen didn't know whose camp it was till he saw
David. Oh, I'm so glad!" and she ran to Susan, clutched her arm and
said in a hurried lower key, "Bella's sick. She feels terribly bad,
out here in this place with nothing. Isn't it dreadful?"

"I'll speak to her," said Susan. "You stay here."

The oxen, now at the outskirts of the camp, had come to a standstill.
Susan stepping on the wheel drew herself up to the driver's seat.
Bella sat within on a pile of sacks, her elbows on her knees, her
forehead in her hands. By her side, leaning against her, stood the
little girl, blooming and thoughtful, her thumb in her mouth. She
withdrew it and stared fixedly at Susan, then smiled a slow, shy smile,
full of meaning, as if her mind held a mischievous secret. At Susan's
greeting the mother lifted her head.

"Oh, Susan, isn't it a mercy we've found you?" she exclaimed. "We saw
the camp hours ago, but we didn't know it was yours. It's as if God
had delayed you. Yes, my dear, it's come. But I'm not going to be
afraid. With your father it'll be all right."

The young girl said a few consolatory words and jumped down from the
wheel. She was torn both ways. Bella's plight was piteous, but to
make her father rise in his present state of health and attend such a
case, hours long, in the chill, night breath of the open--it might kill
him! She turned toward the camp, vaguely conscious of the men standing
in awkward attitudes and looking thoroughly uncomfortable as though
they felt a vicarious sense of guilt--that the entire male sex had
something to answer for in Bella's tragic predicament. Behind them
stood the doctor's tent, and as her eyes fell on it she saw Lucy's body
standing in the