"Donald!" she shrieked faintly, and forgetting her weakness, she sprang up and flung herself into his arms, sobbing in an ecstasy of relief.
He took it in good brotherly fashion, and if the fraternal attitude was not strictly sincere, it was made to appear so.
"There, there, little woman," he comforted, "you mustn't turn loose that way—you'll make yourself sick again. It's all over now, and I got your rabbit. See, here it is"—drawing it from his pocket and dangling it before her as if it were a new toy and she a child to be hastily diverted.
The diversion was not needed; she was freeing herself from the clasp of the remaining reassuring arm, and her cheeks were aflame.
"I didn't know I could be so silly! Please don't hold it against me, Donald," she begged. "If you only knew what I have been through since it grew dark! You'll forgive me and—and not remember it after we—after we——"
His weariness fell from him like a castoff garment. "Not if you don't want me to, Lucetta. But it was rather—er—pleasant, you know—to find that some one really cared enough about what had become of me to—to sort of forget herself for a moment."
The firelight was strong, and if he saw the adoring look that flashed into the gray eyes he was magnanimous enough, or modest enough, to pass it over to the sudden transition from despair to relief.
"It must have been something fierce for you," he went on; "but I did the best I could after I had been idiotic enough to get lost. Of course, since I had the gun with me, it was hours before I got sight of a rabbit; and even then I had to shoot at half a dozen of them before I could manage to hit one. By that time it was getting on toward sunset, and I had lost the brook which I had taken for a guide."
"I knew you would," she broke in. "But that wasn't the worst of it. I kept imagining that you had shot yourself accidentally, and every time I closed my eyes I could see you lying wounded and helpless!"
"You poor little worrier!" he pitied; "I knew you would be scared stiff if I didn't get back by dark, and in my hurry I bore too far to the left; a great deal too far, as it turned out, for when I reached the river I recognized the place. It was just this side of the grove where we were camping when the canoe was stolen."