The Captain was
getting out of temper. What was to be done? Bunker Hill went close up to
her, and, leaning up, whispered sharply in her ear.

The Captain only said, "Yer be blowed!" and turned and kicked the fire,
till it blazed up and filled the room with a rosy light, such only as
smouldering pine logs can throw out when roused up into a flame; and
then she turned around and looked at Bunker Hill as if she had firmly
made up her mind not to be hoaxed. She looked at the good-souled
hunch-back before her as if she would look her through; then suddenly
her eyes rested on one of her white cuffs. "What the devil's that on yer
sleeve? Been in a row again, eh?"

"Come, come, there's no time to lose. It's awful!"

Bunker Hill laid hold of Captain Tommy's arm, and attempted to drag her
to the door. She was getting desperate.

Tommy pulled back, and still kept looking at the excited woman's white
sleeve or cuff.

"What the devil's that on your sleeve? It looks like blood."

Bunker Hill lifted her arm, looking now herself, pulled back her sleeve,
and held it to the light.

"Blood it is! Will you believe me now?"

The stubborn woman, who had been standing on the defensive, with her
back to the fire, darted forward now all excitement, all sympathy. She
snatched her outer garments from the foot of the bed, where they had
lain all this interview, and threw them on her back. She did not stop to
fasten them. She caught a blanket from the bed, threw it over her head,
as she passed out all breathless, and left the cabin-door wide open,
with the fitful pine fire making ghosts on the floor, and the fitful
March morning riding in on the wind and sowing it with ashes.

CHAPTER XVIII.

"BLOOD!"

Limber Tim all this time had held his back against the wall as firmly as
if it was about to fall on all their heads, and their lives depended on
his strength. His mouth had been wide open with wonder. He had not
understood at all from the first, but now he was more than
bewildered--he was terrified.

Blood! blood! He unscrewed himself from the wall, went, winding his long
limber legs up the trail, past the Howling Wilderness, after the silent
but excited women, and all the time this awful sentence of Bunker Hill's
was shooting through his brain--"Blood! blood! it is! Will you believe
me now?"

He reached his post by the pine fence, and, being no wiser than before,
he again wound himself up against the palings, and reached ba