I realized that no amount of conversation would quiet her nerves so effectively as some positive action; besides, I felt the hot blood constantly trickling down my arm, and realized that something needed to be done at once to stanch its flow, before weakness should render me equally useless.
“Do you think you could build a fire on the hearth yonder?” I asked. “I am afraid I am hardly capable of helping you as yet; but we must have light in this gloomy old hole, or it is bound to craze us both. Take those broken chairs if you find nothing better.”
She instantly did as I bade her, moving here and there about the room until she gathered together the materials necessary, but keeping carefully away from where the dead dog lay, until in a brief space of time the welcome flame leaped up in the wide black chimney, and cast its red glare all over the little room. The activity did her good, the light flooding the gloomy apartment yielded renewed courage, and there was a cheerier sound in her voice as she came back to me.
“The great ugly brute!” she exclaimed, looking at the form in the centre of the floor.
“He was certainly heavy enough to have been a bear,” I replied, clinching my teeth in pain, “and sufficiently savage.”
I viewed her now for the first time clearly, and the memory will remain with me till I die. How distinctly that entire picture stands forth with the mist of all these years between! The low-ceiled room, devoid of all furniture save of the rudest and most primitive kind; the bare logs forming the walls, unrelieved in their rough ugliness, except as here and there sundry unshapely garments dangled from wooden pegs; the rough deal table, with a few cheap dishes piled upon one end of it; the dead dog lying across the earthen floor; and over all the leap of 'ruddy flame as the newly kindled fire gathered way, leaving weird shadows here and there, yet steadily forcing them back, and flooding the whole interior with a cheery glow.
She had flung aside the blue and yellow cloak which, during the long hours of our night ride had so completely shrouded her, and stood before me dressed in some soft clinging stuff of a delicate brown color, so cut and fashioned as to most become her rounded, graceful form. About her neck a narrow strip of creamy lace was fitted, the full throat rendered whiter by the contrast, while at her wrists a similar ornament alone served to relieve the simple plainness of her attire. The flaming fire lighted up her face, making it seem to flush with the dancing glow, which sparkled like diamonds in her eyes, and touched with ruddy light the dark, dishevelled hair. Hers was a young, fair face,—a face to love and trust forever, yet with a pride in it, and a certain firmness also that somehow was good to see. All this I noted with one quick upward glance, and with a sudden thrill of the heart such as I had never known before.