"I'm listening."

"I think I'd almost die for you. There!"

Mr. Jonstone's hair fairly bristled with emotion.

"But am I never to see you, never to know your name?"

The answer came from farther off.

"Yes, I think so. Some time."

"Do you promise that?"

Silence—and then:

"I almost promise."

*

Having assured himself that the drunken men were not dead, Mr. Jonstone sighed like a furnace and started down the mountain.

His hand hurt him like the devil, but the pain was first cousin to delight.

Chapter XXVII

*

The Camp was much concerned to hear of poor Mr. Jonstone's accident. A round stone, he said, had rolled suddenly under his foot and precipitated him down a steep pitch of path. He had put out his hands to save his face and, it seemed, broken a bone in one of them. And at that, the attempted rescue of his face had not been an overwhelming success.

It was not until the doctor had come and gone that Mr. Jonstone told his cousin what had really happened. Colonel Meredith was much excited and intrigued by the narrative.

"And you've no idea who she was?" he asked.

"No, Mel; I've thought that the voice was familiar. I've thought that it wasn't. It was a very well-bred Northern voice—but agitated probably out of its natural intonations. Voices are queer things. A man might not recognize his own mother's voice at a time when he was not expecting to hear it."

"Voices," said Colonel Meredith, "are beautiful things. This wasn't a motherly sort of voice, was it?"

"But it might be," said Mr. Jonstone gently. "I wonder if they've anything in this place to make a fellow sleep. Bromide isn't much good when you've a sure-enough sharp pain."

"You feel mighty uncomfortable, don't you, Bob?"

The invalid nodded. He was pale as a sheet, and he could not keep still. He had received considerable physical punishment and his entire nervous system was quivering and jumping.

"I'll see if anybody's got anything," said Colonel Meredith, and he went straight to the office, where he found Maud Darling and Eve.

"My cousin is feeling like the deuce," he said. "He won't sleep all night if we don't give him something to make him. Do you know of any one that's got anything of that sort—morphine, for instance?"

"The best thing will be to take the Streak and get some from the doctor," said Maud. "Let's all go."

"I think I won't," said Eve, looking wonderfully cool and serene. "But I'll walk down to the float and see you off. What a pity for a man to get laid up by an accident that might have been avoided by a little attention!"

Colonel Meredith stiffened.

"I am sorry to contradict a lady," he said, "but my cousin has given me the particulars of his accident, and it was of a nature that could hardly have been avoided by a man. I think, Miss Maud, if you will order a launch, I had better tell my cousin where I am going, in case he should feel that he was being neglected."