"Who are all those people coming this way, and what do they carry with them? It's Walter,—it's Walter!" he cried, as the setting sun shone on the white face, and hurrying out, he asked, huskily, "Is my boy dead?"
"No, not dead," answered one of the group, "his heart is beating yet, but she——" and he pointed to little Jessie, whom a strong man carried in his arms.
But Jessie was not dead, although for a long time they thought she was, and Walter, who had recovered from his fainting fit, was not ashamed to cry as he looked upon the still white face and wished he had never been harsh to the little girl, or shaken her so hard on that first day of her arrival at Deerwood. Slowly, as one wakes from a heavy slumber, Jessie came back to life, and the first words she uttered were:
"Tell Walter I did get his cap, but somebody took it from me and hurt my hand so bad," and she held up the tiny thing on which was a deep cut made by the sharp-pointed ice.
"Yes, darling, I know it," Walter whispered, and when no one saw him he pressed his lips to the wounded hand.
This was a good deal for Walter to do. Never had he called any one darling before, never kissed even his blue-eyed cousin Ellen, but the first taste inspired him with a desire for more, and he wondered at himself for having refrained so long.
"Will she live?" he asked eagerly of the physician, who replied:
"There is now no reason why she should not," and Walter hastened away to his own room, where, unobserved, he could weep out his great joy.
Gradually, as the days went by, Jessie comprehended what Walter had done for her, and her first impulse was that some one should write to her father,—somebody who would say just what she told them to, and as Aunt Debby was the most likely to do this, the poor old lady was pressed into the service, groaning and sweating over the task.
"And now, pa," Aunt Debby wrote, after telling of the accident, "Walter must be paid, and I'll tell you how to pay him. I heard him one night talking with his grandpa about going to school and college, and his grandpa said he couldn't, they were not worth enough in the whole world for that. Then Walter said he should never know anything, and cried so hard that I was just going to cry too, when I fell asleep and forgot it. You are rich, I know, for one of ma's rings cost five hundred dollars, and her shawl a thousand, and I want you to send me money enough for Walter to go to college. It will take a lot, I guess, for I heard him say he'd only studied the things they learn in district schools; but you have got enough. Let me give it to him with my own hands, because he saved me with his, will you, father? Walter is the nicest kind of a boy."