During all this time neither had spoken a word.  Not only had the man remained silent, but he went about his work in so preoccupied a way that it seemed to Frona that he turned a deaf ear to the words of explanation she would have liked to utter.  His whole bearing conveyed the impression that it was the most ordinary thing under the sun for a young woman to come in out of the storm and night and partake of his hospitality.  In one way, she liked this; but in so far as she did not comprehend it, she was troubled.  She had a perception of a something being taken for granted which she did not understand.  Once or twice she moistened her lips to speak, but he appeared so oblivious of her presence that she withheld.

After opening a can of corned beef with the axe, he fried half a dozen thick slices of bacon, set the frying-pan back, and boiled the coffee.  From the grub-box he resurrected the half of a cold heavy flapjack.  He looked at it dubiously, and shot a quick glance at her.  Then he threw the sodden thing out of doors and dumped the contents of a sea-biscuit bag upon a camp cloth.  The sea-biscuit had been crumbled into chips and fragments and generously soaked by the rain till it had become a mushy, pulpy mass of dirty white.

“It’s all I have in the way of bread,” he muttered; “but sit down and we will make the best of it.”

“One moment—­” And before he could protest, Frona had poured the sea-biscuit into the frying-pan on top of the grease and bacon.  To this she added a couple of cups of water and stirred briskly over the fire.  When it had sobbed and sighed with the heat for some few minutes, she sliced up the corned beef and mixed it in with the rest.  And by the time she had seasoned it heavily with salt and black pepper, a savory steam was rising from the concoction.

“Must say it’s pretty good stuff,” he said, balancing his plate on his knee and sampling the mess avidiously.  “What do you happen to call it?”

“Slumgullion,” she responded curtly, and thereafter the meal went on in silence.

Frona helped him to the coffee, studying him intently the while.  And not only was it not an unpleasant face, she decided, but it was strong.  Strong, she amended, potentially rather than actually.  A student, she added, for she had seen many students’ eyes and knew the lasting impress of the midnight oil long continued; and his eyes bore the impress.  Brown eyes, she concluded, and handsome as the male’s should be handsome; but she noted with surprise, when she refilled his plate with slumgullion, that they were not at all brown in the ordinary sense, but hazel-brown.  In the daylight, she felt certain, and in times of best health, they would seem gray, and almost blue-gray.  She knew it well; her one girl chum and dearest friend had had such an eye.