We left Done in a poor condition to help any man—­lying in Kyley’s tent, enfeebled by sickness, clinging to Aurora’s fingers as some sort of anchorage in a fragile world.  When he awoke again Aurora was still by his side.  He grew quite accustomed to waking and finding her there, and in his waking moments for two or three days he clasped her fingers with an almost infantile helplessness.  The first stages of recovery were slow, and in them his chief delight was to lie watching his nurse, scarcely conscious of anything beyond.  He found her very worn, and she looked old.  Few of the qualities that had impelled him to call her Joy remained in this anxious face.  She attended to him assiduously; but she was only a nurse, nothing of a lover, and presently he found himself wondering at her lack of emotion, fretting for the absent caress with an invalid’s petulance.  As his strength returned, Aurora permitted Mary Kyley to assume the larger share of the nursing, and Jim was told what news there was, excepting the truth about poor Mike.  It was Ryder who had informed Aurora that Done and his friends were in the stockade, where he had seen them during the Saturday afternoon.  Mary read a letter from the Peetrees inviting Jim to join them at Blanket Flat—­where they had taken his and Mike’s belongings—­when he was strong enough to get about.  According to Mrs. Ryley’s version of this letter, Mike was with the Peetrees.

Eventually Jim was strong enough to sit up for a while, and in the course of a few days Ben helped him out into the open, and the pure, hot sunshine seemed to pour new life into his veins.  It was after this that Done missed Aurora.  Mrs. Ben said she had gone away for a few days to recruit; but eventually, when Jim was hobbling about, she admitted that she did not know where the girl had gone, and believed that she might not come back.

‘But why?’ said Jim—­’ why go away without a word, without giving me a chance to thank her for what she has done?’

‘Thank her!’ said Mary, with some contempt.  ’Are you thinking the poor girl wanted thanks from you?’

‘It is strange that she should leave in this way,’ answered Done impatiently.

’There’s nothing strange in it, man; it’s just natural.  You never understood how much that girl cared for you, Jimmy.  If you did, perhaps you would know what it meant for her to be working herself to a ghost over your bed there while you babbled of love to another woman.’

‘I did?’

’Did you?  Night and day.  It was Lucy, Lucy, Lucy—­always Lucy.  Lucy with the brown hair and the beautiful eyes—­Lucy the pure, and sweet, and good.  Never a word of Joy—­never the smallest word of the woman who was beating the devil off you, you blackguard!’

‘But I was delirious!  Surely——­’

’True, you were wandering; but it’s only when a man’s mad or drunk that one gets the truth out of him about women.  “There’s not a thought of me left in his heart, Mary!” said the poor girl.’