"Are you all right, Nan?" he asked anxiously.
"All right, Joe; but I've been so worried!"
"And the baby, Nan?"
The wife gently pushed back the covers and proudly brought to view a tiny pink and puckered face. "Fine, Joe. She's just as fine, isn't she?"
A proud, happy light flickered for a moment in the man's eyes as he stooped to kiss the tiny face; then he shut his teeth hard and swallowed suddenly.
"What is it, Joe?" his wife asked, looking at the rudely bandaged foot.
"Cut it—nigh half off, and hurt the bone. It'll be weeks before I can do a stroke of work again. It means—I don't know what, and I daren't think what, Nannie. The cook sewed it up." He glowered at the injured member savagely.
His wife's face grew paler still, but she only asked tenderly, "How did you ever get here, Joe?"
"Rode one of Pose Breem's hosses—his red roan."
"Fifteen miles on horseback with that foot? I should have thought it would have killed you, Joe."