Thatcher, stretched out on a camp bed at the side of the room, chewing a cigar, grunted.

“Well,” the minister continued, “I was around there about three weeks; put in all my vacation there.  Fact is I hated to go off and leave that girl until I was sure I couldn’t do anything for her.  But she was getting out of the woods before I left, and I offered to help her any way I could.  She didn’t seem to lack for money; a couple of letters with money came for her, but didn’t seem to cheer her much.  There was a beast in the jungle,—­no doubt of that,—­but she was taking good care to hide him.  Didn’t seem to care much about taking care of herself, even when she must have known that it looked bad for her.  She was a flighty, volatile sort of creature; made a lot of what I’d done for her in bringing over the doctor.  That doctor was a brick, too.  Lots of good people in the world, boys.  Let me see; Dan, feel in that shooting-coat of mine on the nail behind you and you’ll find the book I started to tell you about.  Thanks.  You see it’s a little banged up because I’ve carried it around with me a good deal—­fishing-trips and so on; but it’s acquired tone since I began handling it—­the green in that leather has darkened.  ‘Society and Solitude.’  There’s the irony of fate for you.—­Where had I got to?  When I went in to say good-bye we had quite a talk.  I thought maybe there was some message I could carry to her friends for her, but she was game and wouldn’t hear to it.  She wanted the little girl baptized, but said she hadn’t decided what to name her; asked me if I could baptize a baby without having a real name.  She was terribly cut up and cried about it.  I said I guessed God Almighty didn’t care much about names, and if she hadn’t decided on one I’d name the baby myself and I did:  I named the little girl—­and a mighty cute youngster she was, too—­I named her Elizabeth—­favorite name of mine;—­just the mother, lying there in bed, and the man and woman that kept the boarding-house in the room.  The mother said she wanted to do something for me; and as I was leaving her she pulled this book out and made me take it.”

“I suppose it was a favorite book of hers and all that,” suggested Dan.

“I don’t think anybody had ever opened that book,” replied Ware, smiling.  “It was brand-new—­not a scratch on it.”

“And afterward?” asked Allen, anxious for the rest of the story.

“Well, sir, I passed through there four years afterward and found the same people living in the little cottage there at that settlement.  Strange to say, that woman had stayed there a couple of years after the baby was born.  Hadn’t any place to go, I reckon.  Nobody ever went near her, they said; but finally she picked up and left; took the baby with her.  She had never been well afterward, and finally, seeing she hadn’t long to live, she struck out for home.  Wanted to die among her own people, maybe.  I don’t know the rest of the story, Allen.  What I’ve told you