Kitty was ironing clothes in the kitchen of the living shack. She and her father had been alone in camp for four days. It had rained in the interim and the greens of Milburn gulch were freshly polished and gilded. Inside the shack the cherry-coloured embers glowed on the grate, and a blue gingham dress was falling into crisp and immaculate folds as it was turned on the ironing board. The door stood open, and a single big fly buzzed in and out over the sill, as if he couldn't make up his mind whether he preferred sunshine or shadow.

While Kitty propelled the iron she thought a girl's thoughts, which alight on a subject as delicately as butterflies, and as lightly sheer away. Since she had beheld the eager light in Bill's eyes at the sight of the dark girl, a fluttering disquiet winged in Kitty's mind. She was thinking of men and women now.

"Annie knows much more"——thus it ran in her head. "I wish she would tell me. I ought to know. But why do I want to know what is ugly? But it's neither ugly nor beautiful; it's mixed. Men are not angels. That's only silly dreaming that leaves you flat. I wouldn't want a man to be too good, really. Just a spice of danger and uncertainty."

Kitty blushed, and looked around her guiltily as if this dreadful thought might have been overheard. She applied herself to her ironing with prim lips.

"I am a fool!" she thought. "Annie is wise. I wish she would come."

Kitty's thoughts were broken in upon by the sound of a footstep outside the shack. Something heavy and unfamiliar in the fall of it caused her to call out sharply: "Is that you, dad?"

There was no answer. She started around the ironing-board to investigate. At the same moment the doorway was darkened by the figure of a stranger, a piteous, ghastly, unkempt travesty of manhood. For a moment he wavered there, then pitched headlong to Kitty's feet. One arm reached toward her as in supplication; the other was grotesquely doubled under him.

Kitty screamed, and stood rooted to the spot. The man lay without moving. He had uttered no sound. Jim Sholto came running from the works with a blanched face. He all but fell over the body, and stood like his daughter, turned into stone with astonishment, His admirable composure quickly asserted itself. He dropped to his knees.

"Help me to turn him over, lass," he said quietly.

The face that was revealed with its sunken, bearded cheeks and painfully drawn lips seemed aged to Kitty. The eyes were closed. Jim lowered his head to listen at the man's breast.

"He lives," he said succinctly. "Dislocated shoulder—starvation. Give me your sharpest knife to cut away this sleeve. Get a pillow for his head. Put water on the stove."

Kitty flew to obey the various orders.

"I'll put his shoulder in before he comes to," Jim went on grimly. "It is more merciful. It's a nasty job—after a week or more untended. Can you stand it?"

Kitty nodded.

"Then hold him as I bid you."

Jim Sholto at fifty was still more powerful than either of his sons. He needed all his strength for the cruel job in hand. The swollen, feverish flesh was dreadful to see. Kitty closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and held on. Deep, soft groans broke from the unconscious man as Jim worked over him. Finally, with a dull click as of colliding billiard balls, it was done. Jim stood up and wiped his face. Now that the most urgent service had been rendered, curiosity began to have way.

"Did you see him come?" he asked.

Kitty shook her head.

"H'm!" said Jim. "With all this vast empty land to choose from, he stumbles on us. Look, his moccasins are worn clean through."

"What happened to him?" said Kitty.

"Who knows?" said Jim. "Maybe just the folly of an ignorant man travelling alone. Maybe there's something on him to give us a clue."

Jim knelt again. His searching fingers came in contact with a little cloth packet sewed to the inside of the man's shirt. Cutting the stitches with the point of his knife, he unwrapped it, and revealed inside a final wrapping of soft cotton, a delicate platinum chain with a great gleaming emerald hanging from it. Father and daughter looked at each other in strong amazement.

"There's some strange tale behind this," said Jim. "Put it in a safe place."

The stranger's eyelids flickered, and a slight sound issued from his lips.

"We must lay him on your bed," said Jim. "This is your job from now. Is there any condensed milk left?"

"I have saved a can," said Kitty.

"Dilute it and warm it, and feed him bread soaked in it when he is able to swallow. Keep hot cloths around his shoulder. Like he will have fever. Give him gelseminum and aconite. You know the doses."

"I know," said Kitty.

A new era began for her from that moment. In the presence of this urgent reality her vague discontents were dissipated like morning mists. Kitty had a passion for mothering, which had never been satisfied, for they all treated her like a child, and none of them had ever been sick. At first the stricken man—that strange visitant from nowhere—was no more than an object for her to wreak her passionate pity upon. Only by degrees did he come to have an individuality for her. It commenced at the moment when she made the surprising discovery that he was young. She learned that from the fresh, vibrant quality of his voice. He was delirious.

All that night, and the next day, and the night that followed he tossed and murmured in his fever. But it could be seen that he was growing better. Kitty was sleepless and happy. At first his speech was formless and incoherent. Later he fixed Kitty with his big bright eyes, and spoke with an unnatural distinctness and appearance of sanity. She listened as one listens to a romance, interested and thrilled, but unsuspicious of any real foundation to the tale. It was too much like a phantasy of the imagination, all his talk of a beautiful valley hidden within the mountains, that you entered through a cave; and of a brave and lovely woman who ruled the place, that he called Nahnya. The name suggested nothing to Kitty.

"He is a poet," she thought with a touch of awe. In her simplicity she wrote it all down during the hours of the night, that she might be able to tell him later.

On the second morning, Kitty dozing on a chair beside the bed was startled into complete wakefulness by hearing him say in a weak, natural voice:

"You are real! I thought I had dreamed you!"

"You're better!" cried Kitty overjoyed.

"Is it still up North?" he said wonderingly. "I never expected to see a white girl!"

"There's none but me," said Kitty.

"How did I come here?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Kitty. "You just tumbled in the door."

He told her of his accident.

"The Stanley rapids!" said Kitty. "That is only ten miles up the river. You must have been many days making it!"

"Walking in circles I suppose," he said. "I started all right, keeping to the shore. But the pain was so bad, I suppose I got lightheaded. I remember stumbling through the woods with all kinds of things going through my head——!"

"You mustn't talk any more," said Kitty commandingly.

"All right," he said smiling. "Don't go away!"

Nourishment and good care worked wonders with the patient. He insisted on getting up next day. Catching ............