“Dinner’s almost ready. Do you think you can sit up to eat, or would you rather lie still?”

“Dinner!” she said. “I thought it was night. Did I dream it all? How did I get here? I don’t remember this place.” She looked around curiously and then closed her eyes as if the effort were almost too much.

“I feel so strange and tired, as if I never want to move again,” she murmured.

“Don’t move,” he told her. “Wait until you’ve had something to eat. I’ll bring it at once.”

He brought a cup of steaming hot beef extract with broken bits of biscuit from a small tin box in the pack and fed it to her a spoonful at a time.

“Who are you?” she asked, after she swallowed the last spoonful.

“Oh, I’m just the missionary. Brownleigh’s my name. Now don’t talk until you’ve had the rest of your dinner. I’ll bring it in a minute. I want to make you a cup of tea, but you see I have to wash this tin cup first. The supply of dishes is limited.”

His genial smile and hearty words reassured her, and she smiled.

A missionary! she thought and opened her eyes to watch him as he knelt before the fire. She’d never seen a missionary before, to her knowledge. She always imagined them a different species, plain old maids with hair tightly drawn behind their ears and a poke bonnet with little white lawn strings.

This was a man, young, strong, pleasant, and handsome as a fine bronze statue. His brown flannel shirt fit easily over well-knit muscles and matched his thick brown wavy hair in which the sun was setting glints of gold. His wide-brimmed felt hat pushed back on his head, the corduroy trousers and leather chaps, and the belt with a brace of pistols all fit the picture. The girl felt she’d suddenly left her own country and been dropped into an unknown land with a strong, kind angel to look after her.

A missionary! Then of course she needn’t fear him. As she studied his face she knew she couldn’t be afraid of that face anyway, unless, perhaps, she ventured to disobey its owner’s orders. He had a strong chin and a firm but kind mouth, giving him the appearance of someone not to be trifled with. If this was a missionary, she decided, then she must change her ideas of missionaries.

She watched his light, free movements, first sitting back on his heels to hold the cup of boiling water over the blaze, then rising and crossing to the saddle pack for some needed article. Something both graceful and powerful was present in his every motion. He gave one a sense of strength and almost infinite resource.

Then suddenly she pictured there beside him the man she’d fled, and in the light of this fine face the other darkened and weakened. She had a swift revelation of his true character and wondered that she hadn’t known before. She shuddered, and a gray pallor spread over her face at the memory.

Then at once he was beside her with a tin plate and the cup of steaming tea and began to feed her roast rabbit and toasted corn bread. She ate without question and drank the tea, satisfying her hunger and thirst after the long fast and gaining new strength with every mouthful.

“How did I get here?” she asked suddenly, rising to one elbow and looking around. “I don’t remember a place like this.”

“I found you hanging on a bush in the moonlight and brought you here.”

Hazel lay back and reflected on this. He brought her here. Then he must have carried her! Well, his arms looked strong enough to lift a heavier person than she was, but he brought her here!

A faint color stole into her pale cheeks.

“Thank you,” she said at last. “I suppose I wasn’t just able to come myself.” The corner of her mouth puckered a bit.

“Not exactly,” he answered as he gathered up the dishes.

“I remember my crazy little steed started climbing straight up the side of a terrible wall in the dark and finally decided to wipe me off with a tree. That’s the last thing I remember. I was slipping and couldn’t hold on any longer.