Miss Zillah laid a hand on Azalea’s arm.

“Don’t be so frightened,” she said. “He’s overstrained his heart, no doubt. Find a match. Light the lamps. Carin, help me lift him—well, drag him then. We’ll get him to the lounge. No hurry.”

Azalea, fumbling for the matches and missing them, wondered why Miss Zillah had spoken to her. How had she known that her heart stopped beating at the sight of Keefe prone across the doorstep? And if she was more frightened than the others, how had she shown it—and why, indeed, should she care more than they?

Then she knew. She was only a young girl, but she knew. Somehow, mysteriously and beautifully in this lonely old world, we are able to pick out our own. We know, as we eye them, those who will make us feel befriended and comfortable and safe. At least, we think we know, and even when we find we have been mistaken, we have had the sweetness of the hour of apparent discovery. Yes, it was true; Azalea admitted it as with trembling hands she lighted the lamps, shuddering at the sound of that body being dragged across the floor. Keefe O’Connor, who had said that he did not know his own right name, who admitted that his life had been strange and sad and unsettled, had seemed to her, from the first, like some one she always had known—some one it would be a wicked folly to lose out of her life.

Pa McBirney had warned her that she was too impulsive. He had told her that she must watch out for this very thing, and she had promised him that she would try to put a guard upon herself. Yet by a swift understanding which she could not explain, she had felt from the first that she could trust this lad; could forgive him when he needed forgiveness, and take life as it came, with poverty or plenty, with good or ill luck, if he were near to praise her for the long day’s work, or to laugh with her when play-time came. And now perhaps he was dying!

There, the lamps were lighted at last! She had touched a match to the kindling in the fireplace; she had tossed on a log. She was willing to do anything rather than turn her face and look upon that white one on the couch where Aunt Zillah and Carin, breathing hard, had managed to lift the inert body of her friend.

“Make some black coffee, quick, Azalea,” she heard Aunt Zillah saying. “Make it very strong. Carin, come hold the light while I look in my medicine case.”

Black coffee, very strong! How did one make that? Azalea could not think. “Quick, quick,” Aunt Zillah had said. Azalea gave up thinking, because her hands were doing the work. She found that she could trust them, that some faithful servant in her confused house of thought was doing the work for her. The coffee was ground, the fire was lighted, the pot set on—all as it should be—and still it was not of coffee that she was thinking, but of that white face which she would not look at; that fluttering breath that seemed to cease.

She could hear Miss Zillah slapping the cold hands of the boy there on the couch; could hear her speaking to him and getting no answer. She wondered why Carin didn’t come to her to say something—to tell her how he was faring. Did they expect her to think of nothing but coffee, coffee, coffee—particularly when it seemed never to boil, never to get where it would be of any use?

When she carried the coffee into the living room, he was breathing heavily. His eyes were partly opened, and Miss Zillah had loosened his shirt at the neck, and had poured water over his face and hair. It made him look so strange—so different from the way he usually looked. And yet, though he looked so different, he seemed familiar, too, in a new way.

“It’s not of himself that he reminds me,” thought Azalea, “but of some one else.” The resemblance was pleasant to her, as if the person he made her think of was some one she liked, though she could not think who it was.

Miss Zillah lifted him up and held him steady while Azalea fed him from the spoon with the strong black coffee.

“Don’t let your hand tremble,” said Miss Zillah rather sharply. “Don’t think about your fears, Azalea. He’s got to have the coffee. His heart needs stimulating. Give it to him and stop trembling.”Azalea wouldn’t have supposed it possible that by the mere exercise of will she could stop the shaking of her hand, but when Miss Zillah spoke to her that way, she steadied herself.

Did the moments go fast or slow? She could not tell. She gave him the full cup of coffee and went for more. Carin had heated some hot water and had put it in rubber bags at his hands and feet. He had been wrapped warm, and now, little by little, the horrid purple of his lips began to turn into something more like their usual color. His lids opened with a flutter and he saw those about him. He smiled piteously, like a little boy, and closed his eyes again.

“Perfect rest is what he needs now,” said Miss Zillah. “He may have to be quiet for days. It takes much longer to rest a heart than it does to tire it. Go to bed now, girls. What a day you’ve had! Mercy, what would your people think, Carin, if they knew all you have been through? Don’t think of getting up in the morning, or of going to school. The very thought of your falling ill distresses me.”

It seemed outrageous to leave the gentle Miss Zillah there, her face all drawn with anxiety, alone with that almost unconscious boy, but she insisted upon having her way.

“I’ll call you,” she assured the girls, “if there’s anything you can do.”

“Any least thing—” begged Azalea.

Miss Zillah nodded. So the two crept away to their bed behind the great chimney and the screens, but they did not undress; only lay down in their wrappers and with the light burning beside them. Carin dropped into a heavy sleep and lay there so sunken in the bed that Azalea had her to worry about too. Being of knightly spirit and rescuing folk in distress was rather an expensive business, it appeared. If anything happened to Carin or to Keefe, would the rescue of the Panthers have been worth it? It was not a pleasant question to dwell upon, and Azalea tried not to think of the answer.

She was not sure whether she slept or not. The wall between sleeping and waking was transparent, like glass, and she could see through it. So it was a relief when morning came and she could get out of bed. She was stiff and half sick, but when she had taken her cold bath in the little dressing room they had contrived in the shed, and had got into her clean clothes, she began to feel better. Carin tried in vain to shake her sleepiness off, but she was so wan and worn-looking that Azalea sternly commanded her to keep her bed. In the front room Miss Zillah slept wearily in the arm chair, and Keefe, his eyes wide open, lay watching her. He held up his finger for silence as Azalea drew near, and she slipped out again, comforted at his appearance, to get the breakfast.

In the midst of it, she saw some one coming down the path. It was Paralee, swinging along with her great stride. She still wore her hideous, outgrown, ragged dress, but for all that she looked changed from what she had been. Her hair was smoothly combed, her face properly washed, and there was hope in her eye and decision in her step.

Azalea slipped out of the door to speak to her.

“How be you all?” she asked.

Azalea told her, hastily.

“Ain’t that a pity, now?” sighed Paralee. “I knew that boy wasn’t peart enough for such a long tug. I wanted him to let me carry pa part of the way, but he wouldn’t hear to it. He’s jest beat out; that’s what ails him. Lying quiet is the best thing he can do, I reckon.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Azalea anxiously. “And, oh, Paralee, how ever am I to get over to school to-day? I’m so stiff I can hardly move; and there’s so much to be done here at the house that I don’t believe I ought to leave.”

“Ain’t it a pity,” said Paralee, kicking viciously at a stone, “that I ain’t got my eddication yet! I would jest love to do that thar teaching for you-all.”

“I wish to goodness you could,” sighed Azalea fervently. “But you seem to be the only person around here who even wants to do such a thing—”

She broke off her sentence suddenly, remembering that she had heard Mr. Rowantree say that teaching was the one thing in the way of work that he actually enjoyed. She told Paralee.

“He’d do it,” she cried, “if only I had some way of getting word to him. It seems such a pity to break up school just when we’re getting it so nicely started, doesn’t it? And this is little Skully Simms’ first day, too! I couldn’t really answer for what might happen if he got there and met the Coulters and their friends face to face.”“Oh, that thar Bud Coulter’ll keep his word about not tetching the little cuss,” said Paralee placidly. (She was a Coulter in her sympathies.) “But I’ll tell you what, Miss Azalea, you jest say the word and I’ll run shortcuts over to the Rowantrees and tell them what’s doing.”

“Oh, will you, Paralee? Dare you? Oughtn’t you to be with your father and mother?”

“Nope. They’re all right, I reckon. Mr. Thompson, he’s to take ’em down to the afternoon train. Pa ain’t looking very peart, but it warn’t to be expected that he would. Ma acts like she was scared to death, but Mis’ McEvoy’s fixing her out in proper clothes. Mr. McEvoy, he’s gone down to Bee Tree to do some telegraphing about the hospital pa’s to go in. My, ain’t they rich!”

“Rich!” cried Azalea aghast. “Who?”

“Oh, the McEvoys and Mr. Thompson.”

“Rich!” repeated Azalea. But the words died on her lips. So Paralee thought the McEvoys in their two-roomed cabin, and good old Haystack with his fiddle, rich! She only said:

“Have you had breakfast, Paralee?”

The girl shook her head.“Come in then. Things are cooked now, and you can eat and then run to Rowantree’s. But you are obliging, Paralee!”

Paralee looked at her with something akin to impatience.

“Say,” she said deep in her throat, “don’t you thank me for nothing, you hear? If I was to crawl on my hands and knees around this here mountain, it wouldn’t even up with what you’re doing for me. Why, Miss Azalea, I thought I’d go crazy thinking about my pa and ma in that thar place—plumb crazy, that’s what I thought I’d go. Ma laid it up against Pete for running away. I tell you, he had to. It got so awful he just had to.”

“I suppose he did,” said Azalea sympathetically. She knew very well—for she was still a child—that there are troubles so dark and hopeless that children cannot endure them.

A few moments later, standing by the door, she saw Paralee striding along the old, overgrown road that ran toward Rowantree Hall.

She had confidence, somehow, that Mr. Rowantree would not fail her. Indolent he might be, odd and proud and vexatious he undeniably was, yet he had a reverence for the seeking mind, and she felt he would not let these mountain children ask in vain.

She was quite right. An hour before school time she saw him mounted on a sorry nag, which he rode magnificently and as if it were the most dashing of horse flesh, coming toward her door. He dismounted with a splendid gesture, and riding crop in hand, came forward toward the Oriole’s Nest. By this time Aunt Zillah was sleeping properly in her bed, and Keefe, wide-eyed and restless, lay on the sofa with instructions neither to move nor talk. So Azalea met Mr. Rowantree outside the door and hurriedly told him all the story of the past two days. As he stood there on the little porch, he, being tall, could look well over her head at the figure of Keefe lying stretched upon the sofa. It was a sight to make him sorry, but not one, it would seem, to hold him fascinated. Yet he gazed and gazed; then, trying to look away, looked in again.

“Who is it that boy looks like, Miss Azalea?” he asked. “Somebody—”

“I know,” replied Azalea under her breath. “Somebody—but who?”

They could not decide, and let it pass. Azalea went over to the schoolhouse with Mr. Rowantree and introduced the pupils to him, and gave him an idea of what was to be studied for the day. Mr. Rowantree looked somewhat out of place in the little schoolhouse, to tell the truth; he was so tall, so fine, so altogether magnificent with his reddish brown hair and whiskers and his snowy suit of frayed linen. The children seemed rather awed by him, but Azalea noticed that little Skully Simms kept close to him, preferring him, with all his strangeness, to the Coulters, although the warlike Bud had given bond for good behavior.

When she got back home, the house was very still. Carin was lying in the hammock asleep. There were circles under her eyes, and the lovely wild rose bloom was gone from her cheek.

“I must take better care of her,” thought Azalea for the twentieth time, stealing past her into the house. Aunt Zillah was giving Keefe some milk, and treating him as gently as if he were glass and might break.

“Remember,” she said as she left the room, “he’s not to talk. Two or three days of perfect rest will, in my opinion, make him all right. It isn’t anything unusual for a young man to overstrain his heart. He might have done it in school athletics and then he wouldn’t have been a hero at all. Mr. Thompson was looking for you, Zalie. He starts in a short time for Bee Tree, so that Mr. Panther may have a little rest between his wagon ride and his train journey. Mr. Thompson is going with him straight to the hospital. Carin gave him the money—except for a little—a very little—addition which I made. So now, all is well again, or on the way to be well, and you must go and lie down. Take a glass of milk first and sleep as long as you can. I’m going out to see to the chickens. They’ve been sadly neglected, poor things.”

Azalea stood in the cool, tidy little room vaguely regarding the lad on the sofa. He looked amazingly long as he lay stretched out, all relaxed and pallid like that. The “sad-glad” look which Azalea so often had noticed on his face, was there now. He held out his hand for her to come nearer and when she was close enough he whispered:

“I oughtn’t to be staying here, Miss Azalea. It’s making trouble I am for Miss Pace and the rest of you. Anyway, it’s not fitting for me to be here. Isn’t this a sort of nunnery?” He smiled in his sidelong, whimsical fashion. “If my tent was to be fixed up right I could wait on myself well enough, and Mr. McEvoy could be bringing me over a drop of soup now and then or a pail of milk.”

Azalea made no protest, for she knew how he felt. She would have felt the same way in his place.

“We love to have you here,” she said softly. “We truly love it. And it wouldn’t be safe yet for you to go to your tent. But I was thinking—”

“Yes?”

“How would it be if you went to Rowantree Hall, and got some one—Bud Coulter, or some one like that—to wait on you?”

To Azalea’s surprise he looked up with eagerness in the eyes that a moment before had been so lackluster.

“Oh, I wonder if it could be arranged,” he said. “I should like that. I can’t tell why, but I should like it more than anything. Miss Azalea, will you see if it can be done? I’m terribly tired. I—I should like beyond words to go there.”A sharp little grip of jealousy that he should prefer Rowantree Hall to the Oriole’s Nest had Azalea by the throat and kept her from answering. But she was ashamed of that pang even while she suffered from it, and nodding reassuringly, she went into the kitchen to attend to the neglected duties there.