Dorothy, having made all the preparations she could, had re-entered the kitchen.  The first thing that drew her attention was the sleeping figure of the sergeant in the chair.  She was filled with self-reproach.  Why had she forgotten all about this wounded, tired-out man?  Why did she always seem to be holding him at arm’s-length when there was, surely, no earthly reason why she should do so?  His manner had always been perfectly courteous to her, and even deferential.  He had done her father many acts of kindness, without as much as referring to them, and still, with a spice of perversity, she had always shrunk from appearing to notice him.  She shrewdly suspected that his present life was not the sort of one he had been accustomed to, that, in fact, he belonged by birth and upbringing to a state of things very different from hers.  He looked wretchedly uncomfortable and, doubtless, as his limbs seemed cramped, they were cold.  She would find a rug to throw over him.

She picked up one, and, with a strange shyness that she had never experienced before, placed it carefully over him.  If he awoke she would die with terror—­now that he was asleep and did not know that she was looking after his comfort, she experienced a strange, undefinable pleasure in so doing.  It was quite a new feeling—­something that filled her with a vague wonder.

And then he suddenly opened his eyes, and looked at her for a few moments without stirring.

“Thank you,” he said simply, and closed his eyes again.

She could have cried with vexation.  If he had been profuse in his thanks she would have had an opportunity of cutting him short with some commonplace comment.

“Hadn’t you better lie on the couch, Mr. Pasmore?” she said.  “You don’t look as if you fitted that chair, and it makes you snore so.”

She had hardly thought herself capable of such perfidy, but she did not want him to think that she could be altogether blind to his faults.  He sat bolt upright in an instant, and stammered out an apology.

But she cut it short.  She resented the idea that he should imagine she took sufficient interest in him to be put out by a trifle.

At that very moment there rang out a rifle shot from the ridge just above the wood hard by.  It was followed by another at a greater distance.

“There!” said the girl, with a finger pressed against her lower lip, and a look as if of relief on her face.  “Now you will have some work to do.  They have come sooner than you expected.”

He scanned her face for a moment as if to note how this quick call to grim tragedy affected her.  A man of courage himself, he instantly read there possibilities of a very high order and exceptional nerve.  There was nothing neurotic about her.  Whatever the wayward imaginings of her heart might be, she was a fresh, wholesome and healthy daughter of the prairie, one whose nerves were in accord with her mind and body, one for whom there were no physical or imaginary bogeys.