Considering the small space at their disposal, the owners of that peculiar abode had done their very best with it. One side had two shelves or bunks, while on the other was a seat that served as sitting-room.
On the lower shelf lay a wasted figure wrapped in an old coat and a tattered red blanket. At the first sight of the bleached, yellow face Nell gave a start of dismay.
“Poor granfer, do you feel very bad?” she murmured, stooping forward so that her face could be plainly seen by the wasted figure on the shelf.
“Nell, is it you?” he asked, in feeble surprise, staring at her as if he could not believe the evidence of his sunken eyes.
“Yes, it is Nell,” she said, with a nervous laugh that ended in something like a sob.
Perhaps he was thinking of their last meeting and his fierce brutality, for the surprise still lingered on his face as he asked—
“What made you come?”
“The boy—Joe, he said his name was—told me that their lodger was sick; he came to buy a pie, you know, and when he said the lodger’s name was Doss, I thought it must be you, only——” but she broke off abruptly.
“Only what?” he demanded suspiciously, for, judged from the standpoint of how he himself would have behaved under the circumstances, Nell’s coming was wholly inexplicable.
“Only I thought that you were dead, wiped out by the Skeena crowd, or the Tacla Indians,” she said, unconsciously quoting from Ike.