She watched his shadowy motions from her bed, and when at last he had nestled into his blankets, she said: “If you don’t lose your chill I’ll heat a rock and put at your feet.”
He was ready to cry out in shame of his weakness; but he lay silent till he could command his voice, then he said: “That would drive me from the country in disgrace. Think of what the fellows down below will say when they know of my cold feet.”
“They won’t hear of it; and, besides, it is better to carry a hot-water bag than to be laid up with a fever.”
Her anxiety lessened as his voice resumed its pleasant tenor flow. “Dear girl,” he said, “no one could have been sweeter—more like a guardian angel to me. Don’t place me under any greater obligation. Go to sleep. I am better—much better now.”
She did not speak for a few moments, then in a voice that conveyed to him a knowledge that his words of endearment had deeply moved her, she softly said: “Good night.”
He heard her sigh drowsily thereafter once or twice, and then she slept, and her slumber redoubled in him his sense of guardianship, of responsibility. Lying there in the shelter of her tent, the whole situation seemed simple, innocent, and poetic; but looked at from the standpoint of Clifford Belden it held an accusation.
“It cannot be helped,” he said. “The only thing we can do is to conceal the fact that we spent the night beneath this tent alone.”
In the belief that the way would clear with the dawn, he, too, fell asleep, while the fire sputtered and smudged in the fitful mountain wind.
The second dawn came slowly, as though crippled by the storm and walled back by the clouds. Gradually, austerely, the bleak, white peaks began to define themselves above the firs. The camp-birds called cheerily from the wet branches which overhung the smoldering embers of the fire, and so at last day was abroad in the sky.
With a dull ache in his bones, Wayland crept out to the fire and set to work fanning the coals with his hat, as he had seen the Supervisor do. He worked desperately till one of the embers began to angrily sparkle and to smoke. Then slipping away out of earshot he broke an armful of dry fir branches to heap above the wet, charred logs. Soon these twigs broke into flame, and Berrie, awakened by the crackle of the pine branches, called out: “Is it daylight?”