An eager appeal was in her glance, and her lips moved feebly. He bent his ear to them. She was faintly whispering—
“Water, water!”
His heart bounding with gladness, he brought cold water. With difficulty he restrained her eagerness, lest she discover that she was crippled and bound. He covered her eyes with a napkin, for he observed that her glance was becoming strained and curious. She submitted quietly, while he gave her the water with a spoon. After that she sighed in weariness and content, but her deep inspiration was checked by pain. Her burning skin and an uneasiness throughout her entire frame warned him that she had a fever. He gave her a remedy for that. It was not until daylight had come that, after watching her for hours as she lay awake and seemingly halfconscious, he observed her finally drift into sound slumber.
The young man rose and found himself weak and dizzy; but after he had prepared and eaten a simple breakfast he felt stronger. Seemingly by a miracle, he had gone through his task in safety thus far. He must now leave his patient for a while, to discharge a grim duty that awaited him in the road below,—a duty from which his every sensibility recoiled with unspeakable repugnance. Lest an untoward accident should happen in his absence, he gave his patient a stupefying drug.
He dreaded to open the front door of his hut. When he did, he found the thing that he feared: the wind had ceased after midnight, and the snow had been falling ever since, and still was falling. It had whitened the walls of the canon, and, before the wind had ceased, had eddied and drifted about the hut in a way that filled the young man with alarm for the future. Would his strength be sufficient to fight it if the storm should be greatly prolonged, to the end that he and his charge should not be buried alive?
He put this dread away, and with a heavy heart followed the steep trail down to the road.
CHAPTER FIVE
NOON was near at hand when the guest of the hut waked to full consciousness. Her first impulse was to cry out with the pain that tortured her; but her strong will assumed command, and she looked inquiringly into the anxious face beside her Obviously she realized that a catastrophe had overtaken her, and she was now silently demanding an explanation.