"I want to tell you, dear," she said simply. Then she fell silent for a little. The lover, watching the warm olive contour of the cheek against which the long black lashes swept as her eyes closed in meditation, rejoiced yet once again in the beauty and the daintiness of this maiden whom he had found and won for himself here amid the rigors of the Northland. He noted the slight drooping of the tenderly curving lips, and longed to kiss away their sadness. Presently Nell went on speaking, rather rapidly, as if anxious to be done with an unpleasant task, and in a tone that told of restrained emotion:
"It was twelve years ago that Papa and Mamma Ross found me. You know Papa Ross is a born pioneer, and Mamma has grown to be just like him. For years they have been moving with the frontiers. That time they were camping by a river down below. There had been a heavy storm, and the river ran high. They heard a cry from somewhere out in the night on the water. They ran to the bank and looked. But it was dark, and they couldn't see anything or hear another sound. Rover was with them—a splendid big Newfoundland." The girl's voice softened. "Rover died two years ago, just before we came up here. I loved him so!"
"I think I can guess," Jack ventured, as the girl paused. "It was Rover who saved you—for, of course, it was you out there in the river."
The girl nodded somberly.
"Yes," came her answer, very gently uttered; "I was out there in the river, drowning. The current swept me along with it. There was a point of the shore just below where Papa Ross had camped. I was carried into the eddies there. Somehow, Rover caught a glimpse of my face, or, maybe, just his instinct guided him. Anyhow, as Papa Ross has told me, Rover sprang into the river, and, when Papa Ross had followed around the inlet toward the point, he found the dog trying to drag me out of the water, up on the bank. Papa Ross carried me to the camp, and there he and Mamma worked over me for a long time. It was a close call, Papa Ross says, but finally they got me to breathing again.... And that's about all."
"And so," Jack questioned in some surprise, "you don't know any more than that?—where you came from, or anything?"
Once again Nell shook her head.
"No, nothing more than that. Papa Ross always thought that I must have struck my head somehow, there in the water. Anyhow, I was confused when I came to. I couldn't seem to remember anything exactly—except my name, Nell. Sometimes I have shadowy memories, but they melt away before I can get anything definite. So, you see, I'm just a nobody, Jack, as I told you—just a mystery that came out of the night and the river."
"Everybody to me," the lover declared again; "everything to me." And now, at last, he took the lithe, slender form of the girl into his arms, and kissed the sorrowfully drooping lips to smiles again.
But, after a little, when there came a lull in the caresses and murmured endearments, Jack Reeves spoke a question that was puzzling him: