ou are safe at the hotel, and your
leg mended."

"Very well. I direct, but you command. As soon as we have a column
of smoke ascending from this point you must try to find an open space
near here, and wave something white as a signal of distress."

He had scarcely concluded before she was at work. The prostrate tree
against which he had managed to place her at such pain to his broken
limb served as a back-log, and soon a column of smoke was ascending.
At times she would turn a shy, half-doubting, half-questioning glance
at him, but he would smile so naturally and speak so frankly that the
suspicion that he had heard her words almost passed from her mind.

"Madge," he said, "in finding an outlook toward the hotel or valley,
don't go far away, if possible. It makes me awfully nervous to think
of you climbing alone."

She found a projecting rock beneath them within calling distance, and
on an extemporized pole she fastened the napkins. At his suggestion
she waved them only downward and upward, at the same time sending out
her powerful voice from time to time in a cry for help.

He, left alone, sometimes groaned from an unusually severe twinge of
pain, and again laughed softly to himself over the situation. He knew
that the question of their being sought and found was only one of
time, and he would have been willing to have had all his bones broken
should this have been needful to secure the knowledge which now
thrilled his very soul with gladness. The past grew perfectly clear,
and the pearl of a woman who had given herself to him so long ago
gained a more priceless value with every moment's thought, "Ah,
sweet Madge! I'm the blessed idiot you loved and toiled for at Santa
Barbara! I shouldn't have believed that such a thing could happen in
this humdrum world."

Nor would it seem that the attention of even a fraction of that great
world could be obtained. The shadows of evening began to gather, and
Madge, at Graydon's call, returned, wearied and somewhat discouraged.

"Cheer up," he said. "It is only a question of time. We shall soon be
missed, and our signals will be more effective when it is dark. See,
we shall not starve. I have been getting supper for you. Keeping the
remnants of our lunch wasn't a bad idea, was it?"

"Keeping up your courage and mine is a better one. Graydon, I fear you
are suffering very much."

"Oh, Madge, armies of men have broken their legs! That's nothing but a
little disagreeable pros