"Right you are, my lass," answered Davy; "an' it's rare good sense ye show in remindin' me o' the same. It escapes me many's the time that he's a bit of a stranger when all's said; an' do ye know, e'en at the first he had no the ways of a stranger to me. I used to fancy that something in his build, or it may ha' been but the voice, was like to—"
"You are either too old or not old enough to have fancies, Davy MacDougall," interrupted the girl briskly, as Stuart re-entered. "Well, is it time to be moving?"
He looked at his watch.
"Almost; but come to the fire and get well warmed before we start. I believe it grows colder; here, take this seat."
"Well, I will not," she answered, looking about her; "don't let your gallantry interfere with your comfort, for I've a chair of my own when I visit this witchy quarter of the earth—yes, there it is."
And from the corner by the bunk she drew forward the identical chair on which she had sat through the night at her only other visit. But from her speech Stuart inferred that this time was but one of the many.
"What are you going to do here, Davy MacDougall?" she asked, drawing her chair close beside him and glancing comprehensively about the cabin; "weather-board it up for winter?"
"Naw, scarcely that," he answered good-humoredly; "but just to gather up the blankets or skins or aught that the weather or the rats would lay hold of, and carry them across the hills to my own camp till the spring comes; mayhaps he may come with it."
The hope in his voice was not very strong, and the plaintiveness in it was stronger than he knew. The other two felt it, and were silent.
"An' will ye be tellin' him for me," he continued, after a little, to Stuart, "that all is snug an' safe, an' that I'll keep them so, an' a welcome with them, against his return? An' just mention, too, that his father, Grey Eagle, thinks the time is long since he left, an' that the enemy—Time—is close on his trail. An'—an' that the day he comes back will be holiday in the hills."