Two months later in time, and in distance five hundred miles from Fort Cheever, the little steamboat Northern Belle was making her way blithely down on the current of the Miwasa River on her last trip of the season. On the upper deck Ralph, a shadow of the blooming youth that had first set forth from Fort Edward, lay sleeping in an invalid chair that the "boys" at the Crossing had made him for the journey. Beside him sat Kitty, almost as pale and wasted as her patient, but with a soft triumph in her eyes; he was safely on the mend.
He stirred and murmured her name.
"Yes?" she answered, in her quick hushed voice.
"Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you were there."
"Lazy!" she said. "Why didn't you open your eyes and look?"
"My eyelids weigh pounds!" he said. "I can sleep twenty-three and a half hours a day!"
He lay musing for a while. "Kitty?" he said again.
"Well?" One could see "Dear!" on her lips, but it was not uttered.
"I was thinking—I'm glad I didn't hop the twig after all!"
She did not answer.