“My name is Eleanor Hamblyn, and I keep the food-shop close to Camp’s Gulch depot; can you direct me there, please? They will be in such a state of worry about me at home,” she said, with a pathetic little break in her tone caused by weariness and fright, for the man had not relinquished her hand.
The moon was coming up, and the purple gloom was being shot with silvery light, when the man suddenly exclaimed, in a tone of delight—
“By all that is wonderful, I believe you are my Miss Nell, my good friend of nearly two years ago!”
“Mr. Bronson?” she said, in amazement. Then, because her relief was so great, collapsed suddenly in a flood of undignified tears.
“Poor little girl!” he said gently. “Come over to my fire, and I will give you some supper. But are you hurt?” he asked anxiously, as Nell stood quaking, shivering on the edge of the yawning pocket, which the light of the rising moon showed so plainly now.
“No, thank you; but I am very tired, and—and hungry,” she admitted, in a burst of candour. “I was rather frightened too, for I thought you were a miner, and some of the people about here are very rough.”
“I am afraid that I look rather rough too, but I have been on the tramp for two weeks now, and work of that sort soon rubs the fresh newness from one’s appearance. Sit down on this stone by the fire, and I will get you a mug of tea and a rasher of bacon in no time. One good turn deserves another, you know, and the last time we met it was you who succoured me,” he said, seating her on a big flat stone close to the blazing wood fire, and then bustling about with hospitable haste to get her some supper, which she was needing so badly.
Nell felt too tremulous and unsteady to trust herself to say much for a few minutes, and she sat watching him in silence, and wondering how it chanced that a man with so much culture and refinement, should be roughing it in the wilds like a common miner.
“Are you criticizing my cookery, or are you wondering how it is that I am wandering round in this fashion, and leading such a vagabond life?” he asked abruptly, as he carefully lifted a tin mug of tea from the coals and brought it to her.
Nell laughed softly. “I was not thinking of the cookery; but it did puzzle me that you should be wandering about in such a fashion, because you—you don’t match the life,” she said, with a little halting confusion of speech, feeling rather ashamed of her curiosity.