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On the following day McWha went to work again, but not till after breakfast, when the others had long departed. Rosy-Lilly, with one hand twisted in her little apron, was standing in the doorway as he passed out. She glanced up at him with the most coaxing smile in her whole armoury of allurements.
But Rosy-Lilly put out her hands to him confidingly. "I'm goin' to let you hear me my prayers," she said, her clear, baby voice carrying every syllable to the furthest corner of the room. An ugly light flamed into McWha's eyes, and he sprang to his feet, brushing the child rudely aside. "That's some o' Jimmy Brackett's work!" he shouted. "It's him put 'er up to it, curse him!"
McWha would not look at her, and his face was as sullenly harsh as ever; but as he passed he slipped something into her hand. To her speechless delight, it proved to be a little dark-brown wooden doll, daintily carved, and with two white beads, with black centres, cunningly set into its face for eyes. Rosy-Lilly hugged the treasure to her breast.
Then he handed over his own bunk to the wounded man, declaring optimistically that McWha would come round all right, his breed being hard to kill. It was hours later when McWha began to recover consciousness, and just then, as it happened, there was no one near him but Rosy-Lilly. Smitten with pity, the child was standing beside the bunk, murmuring: "Poor! poor!
As for Rosy-Lilly, her feelings were this time so outraged that she would no longer look at McWha. The long backwoods winter was now drawing near its end, and the snow in the open spaces was getting so soft at midday as to slump heavily and hinder the work of the teams.
"He'd 'a' cuffed the kid ef he da'st, he glared at her that ugly!" "Like to see 'im try it!" responded Johnson through his teeth, with a look to which his blank eye lent mysterious menace. The time soon came, however, when McWha resumed his old seat and his old attitude on the bench. Rosy-Lilly avoided him for two evenings, but on the third the old fascination got the better of her pique.
"'S if he thought I'd bite 'er!" mused McWha, somewhat inconsistently. For a long time he lay wondering confusedly. At last he opened his eyes wide, felt his bandaged head, and called for a drink of water in a voice which he vainly strove to make sound natural. To his surprise he was answered by Rosy-Lilly, so promptly that it was as if she had been listening for his voice.
Bird Pigeon, who was something of a beau in the Settlements, understood this, and stirred the loyal wrath of Walley Johnson by saying so. "There ain't nawthin' about Red McWha to make Rosy-Lilly keer shucks fer 'im, savin' an' except that she can't git him!" said Bird. "She's that nigh bein' a woman a'ready, if she be but five year old!"
Nevertheless, it came about that, without a word said by any one, from the hour of Rosy-Lilly's arrival in camp, all the indecent "chanteys" were dropped, as if into oblivion, from the woodsmen's repertoire. During the songs, the smoking, and the lazy fun, Rosy-Lilly would slip from one big woodsman to another, an inconspicuous little figure in the smoke-gloomed light of the two oil-lamps.
The two choppers sprang wildly for shore, as the whole face of the jam seemed to crumble in a breath. At this moment a scream of terror was heard and every heart stopped. Some thirty yards or so upstream, and a dozen, perhaps, from shore, stood Rosy-Lilly, on a log. While none were observing her she had gleefully clambered out over the solid mass, looking for spruce-gums.
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