More Tish | Page 8

pulling Modestine up by his bridle. A more outrageous quartet it would
have been impossible to find, or a more outraged one. Aggie let down
her dress, which she had pinned round her waist, releasing about a
quart of water from its folds, and stood looking about her with a sneer.
"I don't think much of your cave," she said. "It's little and it's dirty."
"It's dry!" said Tish tartly.
"Why stop at all?" Aggie asked sarcastically. "Why not just have kept
on? We couldn't get any wetter."
"Yes," I added, "between flowering hedgerows! And of course these
spring rains give nobody cold!"
Tish did not say a word. She took off her shoes and her skirt, got her
sleeping-bag off Modestine's back, and--went to bed with the worst
attack of neuralgia she had ever had.
That was on Wednesday, late in the afternoon.
It rained for two days!
We built a fire out of the wood that was in the cave, and dried out our
clothes, and heated stones to put against Tish's right eye, and brought in

wet branches to dry against the time when we should need them. Aggie
sneezed incessantly in the smoke, and Tish groaned in her corner. I was
about crazy. On Thursday, when the edge of the neuralgia was gone,
Tish promised to go home the moment the rain stopped and the roads
dried. Aggie and I went to her together and implored her.
But, as it turned out, we did not go home for some days, and when we
did----
By Thursday evening Tish was much better. She ate a little potato salad
and we sat round the fire, listening to her telling how they had found
the runaways in this very cave.
"They had taken all the hatchets and kitchen knives they could find and
started to hunt Indians," she was saying. "They got as far as this cave,
and one evening about this time they were sitting round the fire like
this when a black bear----"
We all heard it at the same moment. Something was scrambling and
climbing up the mountainside to the cave. Tish had her rifle to her
shoulder in a second, and Aggie shut her eyes. But it was not a bear
that appeared at the mouth of the cave and stood blinking in the light. It
was a young man!
"I beg your pardon," he said, peering into the firelight, "but--you don't
happen to have a spare box of matches, do you?"
Tish lowered the rifle.
"Matches!" she said. "Why--er--certainly. Aggie, give the gentleman
some matches."
The young man had edged into the cave by that time and we saw that
he was limping and leaning on a stick. He looked round the cave
approvingly at our three sleeping-bags in an orderly row, with our toilet
things set out on a clean towel on a flat stone and a mirror hung above,
and at our lantern on another stone, with magazines and books grouped
round it. Aggie, finding some trailing arbutus just outside the cave that

day, had got two or three empty salmon cans about filled with it, and
the fur rug from Tish's sleeping-bag lay in front of the fire. The effect
was really civilized.
"It looks like a drawing room," said the young man, with a long breath.
"It's the first dry spot I've seen for two days, and it looks like Heaven to
a lost soul."
"Where are you stopping?"
"I am not stopping. I am on a walking tour, or was until I hurt my leg."
"Don't you think you'd better wait until things dry up?"
"And starve?" he asked.
"The woods are full of nuts and berries," said Tish.
"Not in May."
"And there is plenty of game."
"Yes, if one has a weapon," he replied. "I lost my gun when I fell into
Thunder Creek; in fact, I lost everything except my good name. What's
that thing of Shakespeare's: 'Who steals my purse steals trash, ... but
he----'"
Aggie found the matches just then and gave him a box. He was almost
pathetically grateful. Tish was still staring at him. To find on Thunder
Cloud Mountain a young man who quoted Shakespeare and had lost
everything but his good name--even Stevenson could hardly have had a
more unusual adventure.
"What are you going to do with the matches?" she demanded as he
limped to the cave mouth.
"Light a fire if I can find any wood dry enough to light. If I can't----
Well, you remember the little match-seller in Hans Christian
Andersen's story, who warmed her fingers with her own matches until

they were all gone and she froze to death!"
Hans Christian Andersen and Shakespeare!
"Can't you find a cave?" asked Tish.
"I had a cave," he said, "but----"