After he had scanned it for a second time, he looked up at the expectant girl, with a puzzled, though no less kindly, glance.
"But what does it all mean?" he asked. "I suppose the note is from your husband?"
"Yes," assented Nell hurriedly. "He's going to escape."
Jim patted the girl's hand reassuringly.
"Now, just take it easy," he counseled. "You must remember that I don't know a thing about it. So, you're going to tell me everything that's happened, and what your husband is going to escape from."
The calmness of the speaker's voice quieted Nell's excitement, and she proceeded to relate without confusion an outline of what had occurred.
"Poor little girl!" her listener said tenderly, when the narrative was concluded. "Well, he did right to send word to me. I owe you two more than I can pay. And don't you worry, my dear. This cloud will pass quickly. The sunshine will be all the brighter after the shadow." His manner changed, and he spoke briskly. "Now, you get into the cabin. I'd only just got back from my line and kindled the fire when you came. The stove, I guess, is about white-hot by now. I'll attend to the dogs."
Nell went obediently, full of happy reliance on the strength of this man, who was at once so courteous and so kind. She smiled over her distress of a few minutes before. Now, a thick column of smoke rose into the still air from the cabin-chimney.
Inside the tiny room, Nell glanced about her with a curious sense of contentment. There was something homelike in the aspect of the place, despite its bareness. It was plainly, even roughly, furnished with a few tables and chairs besides the stove and bunk. The only decorations were the skins that hung on the log-walls. An oil-lamp was on a small table in a corner. On the large table in the opposite corner were some tins of meat, a saucepan, a few pieces of heavy crockery, and the like. Nell could not interpret the strange effect wrought upon her by these surroundings. She had felt it, in some measure, on the occasion of her first visit to the cabin. Now, however, its force seemed vastly stronger. She puzzled over it in vain. She tried to think it was the sense of relief that so affected her. But she knew that this was not the explanation. She had that inexplicable feeling of being at home. There was no visible cause. Whatever the reason, it lay beneath the surface of things. It was something in the atmosphere, some psychic quality.
It seemed to Nell that the impression made upon her by this room in the cabin was intensified by the entrance of the dweller there, who greeted her with his friendly, gentle smile. Indeed, the kindliness of that smile and the look in the grave eyes touched the girl anew to thankfulness that this man would devote himself to her service in the time of need. She thought to herself that Mr. Maxwell must always have been a very kindly man to all, because he smiled so easily, notwithstanding the sadness of his face in repose. She could not know that, through two-thirds of the years measuring her span of life, Jim Maxwell had not smiled at all.