“His master—some one prospecting hereabouts?”
Briefly Hildegarde explained. As she moved toward the door, she caught an expression on the sunken face so arresting that straightway she said to herself: “What is a starving dog more than a dying man, that I should come to help the one and flee the other?”
“I am afraid you are very ill.”
“Yes,” he answered quietly.
“There’s someone at the settlement who looks after you?”
He smiled faintly. “They’ve given me up as a bad investment.”
“Oh!” broke from the girl’s lips, as she leaned forward and then caught herself up. Was the hermit not dead after all! Was she face to face at last with the discoverer of the Mother Lode? If so, she mustn’t seem to know. “Isn’t there any doctor here?” she added hurriedly.
“There’s a fellow they call ‘doctor.’”
“Then let me go for him.”