bushes, she fired, and
simultaneously with her shot there came an involuntary cry--a sharp
exclamation of pain, and for a second she was rooted to the spot,
forgetting everything but the fear that someone at hand had been hit.

Dropping her gun in the grass, she ran forward in dismay, brushed aside
the screen of weeds and jungle, and came face to face with Captain
Dalton leaning against the trunk of a tree, holding his wrist.

"Oh!--have I hurt you?" she cried in an intensity of alarm rather than
of surprise at finding him there, when she believed him at least some
hundreds of miles away.

Dalton never looked at her, nor replied, but releasing his wrist,
allowed the blood to drip to the ground from a trivial wound. A stray
shot from the many in the cartridge had scratched the skin upon a vein,
and the occasion was serving him well.

But out of all proportion to the injury was his pallor and the emotion
that swept his face and held him quivering and tongue-tied.

"What can I do?" Honor cried in her distress. The sight of blood was
enough to rend her tender heart; and to know that it had been shed by an
act of hers, shook her to the foundations of her being.

Dalton produced a handkerchief in silence and passing it to her, allowed
her to bandage the wound as well as she could. He was concerned only
with watching the beautiful, sunburnt fingers that moved tremblingly to
aid him, or the sympathetic face that bent over the task.

When the bandage was completed, their eyes met, and the same moment
Honor was in his arms, clasped close to his breast while he murmured his
adoration.

"I love you!--my God! how I love you! and I want you so! Oh, my precious
little girl!--my Honey--my love!"

Honor asked no questions, but welcomed, with a sob of joy, the gift of
love that flooded her heart to overflowing. She clung to his neck with
loving abandonment and yielded her lips to his generously. With her
great nature, she could do nothing by halves, so gave of her love with
no grudging hand.

"Since when have you loved me, my Sweet?" he asked in tones that were
music to her ears.

"From the moment you kissed my hand and called me 'brave'!"

"And yet you plunged that dagger in my heart when you said in my
hearing--'I have no interest in Captain Dalton'?"

Honor recalled her conversation with Joyce and blushed. "It was not
true!" she confessed.

"I deserved it--and more!" he said humbly with suffering in his eyes.

"And