“Ah, the wretch! what pain he has put me to, with all the rest of my wrongs! Every bone in my body aches as if I were a hundred years old. Oh! that fate would turn the tables and give that man over to my tender mercies for one day!” she cried, as she struggled painfully to her feet.
“Fate may well do so, Elfie, and if it should, you will remember nothing of Albert but that he was the lover and the beloved of your earliest youth,” said Alberta, in a low and gentle voice, as she led the way taken by Haddycraff towards her hut.
It was built against the highest part of that natural wall of rocks, and it was sheltered from the north wind by a thick clump of cedars that grew above them.
The walls were built of stakes driven into the ground, with cedar boughs woven thickly between them; and the roof was made of sticks laid across the top, with cedar boughs piled and pressed down on them. The flooring, which was also the bedding, was made of dry leaves, with a large, clean camp blanket laid over them. The door was just a simple opening left large enough for a woman to go in and out, and before it hung a small, clean piece of a camp blanket, fastened with wooden pins to the roof.
Beside this door stood Abershaw, another of Alberta’s devoted followers, and at his feet lay a large bundle wrapped in a McIntosh water-proof covering.
“I was the last to leave the encampment, Madam. I lingered behind, with the colonel’s leave, to load two mules with the camp furniture of your room. Here is a part of it,” he said, stooping and beginning to open the bundle.
“And so you ran the risk of capture for the sake of securing these comforts for me, Abershaw?” said the colonel’s wife, with some emotion.
“Danger and duty seems to be the same thing in our wild life, Madam; and I am only too glad to meet the one and brave the other in your services,” said this gallant guerrilla, lifting his hat.
“Warmest thanks, Abershaw. But the colonel will know better than I do how to return such kindness.”
Again the man lifted his hat, and then, pointing to the opposite side of the area, he said: