had nothing to eat
for twenty-four hours except some crackers and cheese which she had
hidden in her satchel before running away; so in spite of the fact that
she was in a bad way from all she had gone through, she did eat a fair
meal of victuals.

I thought she ought to be talked to so as to take her mind from her
fright; but I could think of nothing but my way of cooking the victuals,
and how much I wished I could give her a better meal--just the same sort
of talk a woman is always laughed at for--but she did not say much to
me. I suppose her strange predicament began returning to her mind.

I had already made up my mind that she should sleep in the wagon, while
I rolled up in the buffalo robe by the fire; but it seemed a very bad
and unsafe thing to allow her to go to bed wet as she was. I was afraid
to mention it to her, however, until finally I saw her shiver as the
fire died down. I tried to persuade her to use the covered wagon as a
bedroom, and to let me dry her clothes by the fire; but she hung back,
saying little except that she was not very wet, and hesitating and
seeming embarrassed; but after I had heated the bed-clothes by the fire,
and made up the bed as nicely as I could, I got her into the wagon and
handed her the satchel which I had clung to while bringing her back; and
although she had never consented to my plan she finally poked her
clothes out from under the cover at the side of the wagon, in a sort of
damp wad, and I went to work getting them in condition to wear again.

I blushed as I unfolded the wet dress, the underwear, and the
petticoats, and spread them over a drying rack of willow wands which I
had put up by the fire. I had never seen such things before; and it
seemed as if it would be very hard for me to meet Virginia in the open
day afterward--and yet as I watched by the clothes I had a feeling of
exaltation like that which young knights may have had as they watched
through the darkness by their armor for the ceremony of knighthood;
except that no such knight could have had all my thoughts and feelings.

Perhaps the Greek boy who once intruded upon a goddess in her temple had
an experience more like mine; though in my case the goddess had taken
part in the ceremony and consented to it. There would be something
between us forever, I felt, different from anything that had ever taken
place between a boy and girl in all the world (it always begins in that
way), something of which I could n