"All the fresher and better for the wash," she said; "but I really don't think I could walk very far, my feet are very much blistered. I don't see why they should be so bad; we have only gone about twenty-four miles each day, and I always considered that I could walk twenty miles without difficulty."
"It makes all the difference how you walk, Miss Armstrong. No doubt, if you had been in good spirits, and with a pleasant party, you could have walked fifty miles in two days, although that is certainly a long distance for a woman; but depressed and almost despairing, as you were, it told upon you generally, and doubtless you rather dragged your feet along than walked."
"I don't want to think about it," the girl said, with a shudder. "It seems to have been an awful dream. Some day I will tell you about it; but I cannot now."
"Here are some mealies and some cold meat. We each brought a week's supply with us when we left the waggons. I am sure that you will be all the better for eating something."
"I do feel very hungry, now I think of it," the girl assented; "I have hardly eaten a mouthful since that morning."
"I am hungry myself," Ronald said "I was too anxious yesterday to do justice to my food."
"I feel very much better now," the girl said when she had finished. "I believe I was faint from want of food before, although I did not think of it. I am sure I could go on walking now. It was not the pain that stopped me, but simply because I didn't feel as if I could lift my foot from the ground. And there is one thing I want to say: I wish you would not call me Miss Armstrong, it seems so formal and stiff, when you are running such terrible risks to save me. Please call me Mary, and I will call you Harry. I think I heard you tell my father your name was Harry Blunt."
"That is the name I enlisted under, it is not my own name; men very seldom enlist under their own names."
"Why not?" she asked in surprise.
"Partly, I suppose, because a good many of us get into scrapes before we enlist, and don't care for our friends to be able to trace us."