When she awoke the sun had risen and Prime was up and mending the fire.
"Better," he said cheerfully, in answer to her instant question. "Much better; though my head reminds me of the day when I got the check for my first story—pretty badly swelled, you know. But after I've had a good cup of hot tea"—he stopped in mid-career with a wry laugh. "Bless my fool heart! If I hadn't totally forgotten that we haven't any tea or anything else! And here I've been up a quarter of an hour and more, trying to get a good cooking-fire started! Where were we when we left off last night?"
"We had set out to search for the wreck of the canoe," she explained, rising to stand before the fire. "We came this far, and concluded it was no use trying to go on in the dark. You were pretty badly off, too."
"It's coming back to me, a little at a time and often, as the cat remarked when it ate the grindstone," he went on, determined to make her smile if it were within the bounds of possibility. He knew she must have had a bad night of it, and the brightness of the gray eyes told him that even now she was not very far from tears. "Don't cry," he added abruptly; "it's all over now."
Her laugh was the sort that harbors next door to pathos.
"I'm hungry!" she said plaintively. "We had no dinner yesterday, and no supper last night, and there doesn't seem to be any very brilliant prospect for breakfast this morning."
Prime put his hand to his bruised head as if to satisfy himself that it was all there.
"Haven't you ever gone without a meal before for the raw reason that you couldn't get it?" he asked.
"Not since I can remember."
"I have; and it's bad medicine—mighty bad medicine. We'll put the fire out and move on. While there's life there's hope; and our hope this morning is that we are going to find the wreck of that canoe. Let's hike."