Jim Done lay on Mary Kyley’s comfortable white bed.  His face was ghastly.  Aurora uttered a little cry of pain and terror at the sight of him.  There was blood upon the sheets and the pillows, and Wat Ryder, working in his shirt-sleeves, was deftly closing a gaping scalp wound with horsehair stitches.

Ryder had carried Jim straight to Kyley’s tent, and Mrs. Ben received the wounded man with open arms.

‘We may be followed,’ he said.  ’I’ve brought him out of the thick of it.  Keep watch, please, and give me warning if you see anything of the troopers.  May I use your bed?’

‘My bed!  Yes, and my blood and bones if they’re any good to you.’

’Your eyes can do me better service.  I’m a done man if the police lay a hand on me, and Jim here needs attention.’

‘Then, go to work with an easy mind.’

So Mary kept watch while Ryder worked over Jim with the quickness and decision of a surgeon.  It was not the first time by many that he had dealt with ugly wounds.

‘Don’t neglect the watch,’ he said, a minute after Aurora’s entrance.

Mary looked at Aurora.  The girl was now apparently quite composed; she had cast aside the shawl, and was hastily tying on an apron.  So Mrs. Kyley slipped out again, quite reassured.

‘It would be better, perhaps, if I held his head,’ said Aurora.

‘Yes,’ answered Ryder shortly.

She seated herself on the bed, and took Done’s head between her hands, raising it, and Ryder continued his work rapidly.  No further words were spoken till the scalp wound was stitched, and Aurora, gazing into the seemingly lifeless face of the patient, had a strange feeling of insensibility, as if all her emotions were numbed for the time.  There was not a tremor in her fingers; she felt that under the influence that possessed her she could have suffered any trial without a cry.

‘Now hunt up anything that will do for bandages,’ said the man.

She lowered Jim’s head gently to the pillow again, and made haste to obey, while Ryder examined the bullet-wound.  He showed her how to tear the material, and then bandaged the patient’s head.

‘I was assistant in a hospital for a time,’ he said, in explanation of his masterly work, but he did not say that it was a gaol hospital in which he had gathered his experience.

Aurora watched the man’s hands.  They were extraordinary hands, long and very narrow—­wonderfully capable they seemed.  They inspired her with complete faith.  He was feeling for the ball in Jim’s shoulder.  She helped him to turn the young man upon his face, and the slim, dexterous fingers probed the flesh above the shoulder-blades.

‘Ah!’ he said, with a sigh of relief; and taking his knife, he cut boldly, and, behold—­the bullet!  It was like a feat of legerdemain.  This cut was washed with fluid from a small bottle on the table, smartly stitched, and then, after the wound in front had been treated, the shoulder was firmly bandaged, and Ryder seemed satisfied.  He was none too soon, for at that moment Mary Kyley darted in.