“Betty, would you mind going over to the Fort and relieving Mrs. Martin an hour or two?” said Mrs. Zane one day as she came home, looking worn and weary.  “We are both tired to death, and Nell Metzar was unable to come.  Clarke is unconscious, and will not know you, besides he is sleeping now.”

Betty hurried over to Capt.  Boggs’ cabin, next the blockhouse, where Alfred lay, and with a palpitating heart and a trepidation wholly out of keeping with the brave front she managed to assume, she knocked gently on the door.

“Ah, Betty, ’tis you, bless your heart,” said a matronly little woman who opened the door.  “Come right in.  He is sleeping now, poor fellow, and it’s the first real sleep he has had.  He has been raving crazy forty-eight hours.”

“Mrs. Martin, what shall I do?” whispered Betty.

“Oh, just watch him, my dear,” answered the elder woman.

“If you need me send one of the lads up to the house for me.  I shall return as soon as I can.  Keep the flies away—­they are bothersome—­and bathe his head every little while.  If he wakes and tries to sit up, as he does sometimes, hold him back.  He is as weak as a cat.  If he raves, soothe him by talking to him.  I must go now, dearie.”

Betty was left alone in the little room.  Though she had taken a seat near the bed where Alfred lay, she had not dared to look at him.  Presently conquering her emotion, Betty turned her gaze on the bed.  Alfred was lying easily on his back, and notwithstanding the warmth of the day he was covered with a quilt.  The light from the window shone on his face.  How deathly white it was!  There was not a vestige of color in it; the brow looked like chiseled marble; dark shadows underlined the eyes, and the whole face was expressive of weariness and pain.

There are times when a woman’s love is all motherliness.  All at once this man seemed to Betty like a helpless child.  She felt her heart go out to the poor sufferer with a feeling before unknown.  She forgot her pride and her fears and her disappointments.  She remembered only that this strong man lay there at death’s door because he had resented an insult to her.  The past with all its bitterness rolled away and was lost, and in its place welled up a tide of forgiveness strong and sweet and hopeful.  Her love, like a fire that had been choked and smothered, smouldering but never extinct, and which blazes up with the first breeze, warmed and quickened to life with the touch of her hand on his forehead.

An hour passed.  Betty was now at her ease and happier than she had been for months.  Her patient continued to sleep peacefully and dreamlessly.  With a feeling of womanly curiosity Betty looked around the room.  Over the rude mantelpiece were hung a sword, a brace of pistols, and two pictures.  These last interested Betty very much.  They were portraits; one of them was a likeness of a sweet-faced woman who Betty instinctively knew was his mother.