“Oh, Jack!—­where is daddy—­where—­” she gasped.

“Why, he is all right, Miss Ruth,—­everybody’s all right!  Why did you come here?  Oh!  I am so sorry you have had this fright!  Don’t answer,—­just lean on me until you get your breath.”

“Yes—­but are you sure he is safe?  The grocer’s boy said nobody had seen him alive.”

“Of course I am sure!  Just look across—­there he is; nobody could ever mistake that old slouch hat of his.  And look at the big ‘fill.’  It hasn’t given an inch, Miss Ruth—­think of it!  What a shame you have had such a fright,” he continued as he led her to a pile of lumber beside the track and moved out a dry plank where he seated her as tenderly as if she had been a frightened child, standing over her until she breathed easier.

“But then, if he is safe, why did you leave daddy?  You are not hurt yourself, are you?” she exclaimed suddenly, reaching up her hand and catching the sleeve of his tarpaulin, a great lump in her throat.

“Me, hurt!—­not a bit of it,—­not a scratch of any kind,—­see!” As an object-lesson he stretched out his arm and with one clenched hand smote his chest gorilla fashion.

“But you are all wet—­” she persisted, in a more reassured tone.  “You must not stand here in this wind; you will get chilled to the bone.  You must go home and get into dry clothes;—­please say you will go?”

Something warm and scintillating started from Jack’s toes as the words left her lips, surged along his spinal column, set his finger tips tingling and his heart thumping like a trip hammer.  She had called him “Jack!” She had run a mile to rescue him and her father, and she was anxious lest he should endanger his precious life by catching cold.  Cold!—­had he been dragged through the whirlpool of Niagara in the dead of winter with the thermometer at zero and then cast on a stranded iceberg he would now be sizzling hot.

Again she repeated her command,—­this time in a more peremptory tone, the same anxious note in her voice.

“Please come, if daddy doesn’t want you any more you must go home at once.  I wouldn’t have you take cold for—­” she did not finish the sentence; something in his face told her that her solicitude might already have betrayed her.

“Of course, I will go just as soon as you are rested a little, but you mustn’t worry about me, Miss Ruth, I am as wet as a rat, I know, but I am that way half the time when it rains.  These tarpaulins let in a lot of water—­” here he lifted his arms so she could see the openings herself—­“and then I got in over my boots trying to plug the holes in the sluiceway with some plank.”  He was looking down into her eyes now.  Never had he seen her so pretty.  The exercise had made roses of her cheeks, and the up-turned face framed by the thatch of a bonnet bound with the veil, reminded him of a Madonna.

“And is everything all right with daddy?  And was there nobody in the shanties?” she went on.  “Perhaps I might better try to get over where he is;—­do you think I can?  I would just like to tell him how glad I am it is no worse.”