He felt that he had been tempted to linger too long.  Father Orin was still waiting for him in the desolate cabin where the Cold Plague had left the three orphans.  His conscience smote him for lingering, and yet he could not leave, even now, without speaking again of the poems, and saying that he would fetch the book and leave it the next time he rode by Cedar House.

When he was gone, Ruth looked at William Pressley in silent, troubled perplexity.  She was wondering vaguely why she had felt so ashamed—­almost as if she had done some shameful thing herself—­when he had spoken as he had done before the doctor about Daniel Boone.  It must have been plain to the visitor that she did not think as William thought.  And yet she flinched again, recalling the doctor’s glance at William, and wondered why it should have hurt her, as if it had fallen upon herself.  She was not old enough or wise enough to have learned that the mere promise to marry a man makes a sensitive woman begin forthwith, to feel responsible for everything that he says and does; and that this is one of the deep, mysterious sources of the misery and happiness of marriage.

X

FATHER ORIN AND TOBY MEET TOMMY DYE

Under the spur of his conscience the young doctor rode fast.  He was not the man to let duty wait even on love, without trying to make amends.  But a sharper pang stung him when he reached the desolate cabin in which the Cold Plague had left the orphans.

It seemed to him that Toby, standing by the broken door, gave him a look of reproach.  Toby had not failed or been slow in doing his part; Father Orin and he had already done all that they could, though this was piteously little.  The one had cut fire-wood from the near-by fallen trees, and the other had drawn it to the cabin door, so that there was a good fire blazing on the earthen hearth.  But the rotting, falling logs of the cabin’s walls were far apart, the mud which had once made them snug having dropped out; and the chilly, rising wind blew bitterly through the miserable hut.  The covers on the bed were few and thin, although Father Orin had spread Toby’s blanket over them.  The three little white faces lying in a pathetic row on the ragged pillows, lay so still that the doctor was not sure they were alive, till the oldest child, a boy of three, languidly opened his eyes, looked up unseeingly, and wearily closed them again.

There was a tightening in the doctor’s throat when he turned away, and he was glad to smile at Father Orin’s housekeeping.  The priest certainly had left nothing in his power undone, to keep life in the frail little bodies.  On the hearth was such food as he had been able to prepare, carefully covered to keep it warm.  As the young man’s gaze thus wandered sadly about the cabin, his eyes encountered the old man’s.  The laughter with which he was fighting emotion died on his lips, and their hands met in a close clasp.