More Tish | Page 8

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----"
"But what?"
"Three charming women found it while I was out on the mountainside. They needed the shelter more than I, and so----"
"What!" Tish exclaimed. "This is your cave?"
"Not at all; it is yours. The fact that I had been stopping in it gave me no right that I was not happy to waive."
"There was nothing of yours in it," Tish said suspiciously.
"As I have told you, I have lost everything but my good name and my sprained ankle. I had them both out with me when you----"
"We will leave immediately," said Tish. "Aggie, bring Modestine."
"Ladies, ladies!" cried the young man. "Would you make me more wretched than I already am? I assure you, if you leave I shall not come back. I should be too unhappy."
Well, nothing could have been fairer than his attitude. He wished us to stay on. But as he limped a step or two into the night Aggie turned on us both in a fury.
"That's it," she said. "Let him go, of course. So long as you are dry and comfortable it doesn't matter about him."
"Well, you are dry and comfortable too," snapped Tish. "What do you expect us to