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Updated: June 26, 2025
He threw a strip of it down, and then turned to Waynefleet when he dimly made out a blink of light in the whirling haze of snow. "If you will go in and tell Miss Waynefleet, I'll try to put the horse up," he said. Waynefleet swung himself down stiffly and vanished into the snow. He was half frozen, and it did not occur to him that Nasmyth had only one hand with which to loose the harness.
Nasmyth, one has to put up with a good deal in this country. It is in many respects a barbarous land." Nasmyth saw the faint flush in Laura Waynefleet's face, and said nothing. He fancied that he knew the establishment in Victoria to which Waynefleet referred, but it was not one which he had ever visited, or which the smaller Bush-ranchers usually frequented.
He was, as a matter of fact, grimly serious for the moment as he wondered at the change that had come over him. His life in the silent Bush, the struggle with the icy river, and even Laura Waynefleet, who had encouraged him in his work of rehabilitation, had by degrees become no more than a dim, blurred memory.
With a smile on his bronzed face, Gordon stood looking at him. Gordon was dressed in soil-stained garments of old blue duck, with a patch cut from a cotton flour-bag on one of them. Laura Waynefleet stood a little nearer, and there was also a welcome in her eyes. Nasmyth noticed how curiously at home she seemed amidst that tremendous colonnade of towering trunks.
"Well," he said, "I have evidently been very sick. How did I get here? I don't seem to remember." "Miss Waynefleet found you lying in the snow in the clearing." "Ah!" said Nasmyth "a tall girl with a quiet voice, big brown eyes, and splendid hair?" Gordon smiled. "Well," he said, "that's quite like her."
Nasmyth replied that he intended to leave the ranch, and was explaining that he felt he had already abused his host's kindness, when Waynefleet cut him short. "We have been glad to have you here," he said; "in fact, I have been wondering if you might feel disposed to stay. It is probably evident to you that I cannot do all that is necessary about this place with one pair of hands."
Nasmyth's head was clearer next morning, and, during the week that followed, he grew stronger rapidly, until one night, as he sat beside the stove, he realized that he could, in all probability, set out again on his journey in a day or two. While he talked to Laura Waynefleet, there were footsteps outside, and she ran towards the door as a man came into the room.
"I guess you're fishing?" he observed. "I came here to get a trout for breakfast." "You look like it." Gordon smiled. "As it happened, I saw Miss Waynefleet crossing the clearing. It occurs to me that she may have said something that set you thinking." "I wonder," said Nasmyth reflectively, "what made you fancy that?" Gordon regarded him with a little twinkle in his eyes.
Gordon started, and the girl smiled. "I crossed the veranda last night," she told him, when he hesitated before answering her. The man looked down on her with an unusual gravity. "Well," he said simply, "Laura Waynefleet is quietness, and sweetness, and courage. In fact, I sometimes think it was to make these things evident that she was sent into this world."
"Now," he said, "I want you to understand this thing. If it would be any comfort to her, I'd let Miss Waynefleet wipe her boots on me, and in one way that's about all I'm fit for. I know enough to realize that she'd never waste a moment thinking of a man like me, even if I hadn't in another way done for myself already." "Still," Nasmyth replied quietly, "some women can forgive a good deal."
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