“Did you sleep?”

“Like a top!”

“Bad dreams?” and Dr. Wright felt the pulse of the healthy looking patient, who, with the help of Gwen, had donned a very becoming boudoir cap and negligÉe, two articles of clothing that she had brought to camp in spite of the jeerings of her sisters, who did not see how they could be used. Helen had not had an illness since she was a child and had her tonsils out, and certainly a camp was no place to sport a filmy lace cap and a negligÉe of pale blue silk and lace.

“It is almost worth while having a sn—having a sprained ankle just to prove to my sisters that I was wise in bringing this cap and sacque,” she had laughingly told Gwen, who was assisting her. “I bet snake bite is going to come popping out of my mouth, willy nilly,” she said to herself. “I almost gave it away that time.”

Gwen, who loved pretty things and scented from afar the admiration Dr. Wright was beginning to hold for Helen, considered it very wise to have brought the dainty garments. She could not help thinking, with something akin to bitterness, of her own yellow cotton night gowns that Aunt Mandy considered superfluous articles of clothing; and of the coarse, gray flannel bed-sacque she had worn the summer before when she had caught the measles from Josh; and of how she must have looked when the old country doctor came to see her.

The tent was tidy and sweet when George Wright entered to see how his patient fared. Gwen had spread the steamer rugs over the cots and had even placed a bunch of honeysuckle on the little table at Helen’s bedside. She had had to purloin the table from Miss Somerville’s cabin, but that lady was willing to give up more than a table for her favorite young cousin.

Helen blushed a little when the young man asked her if she had had any bad dreams. The fact was she had had very pleasant dreams in which he had largely figured. She had dreamed that Josephus had turned into Pegasus and that, as she flew along on his shapely back, she had met Dr. Wright floating by on a white cloud and he had wanted to feel her pulse. She had put out her hand and as he felt her pulse, he had jumped from the white cloud square onto the back of Pegasus, and together they rode through the air, the winged horse looking kindly on them with much the benevolent expression of Josephus.

“No, my dreams were pleasant,” she smiled.

Dr. Wright certainly took a long time to feel any one’s pulse, but the truth was that he had forgotten to count, so taken up he was with the fact that pale blue was quite as becoming to Helen as gray with a dash of scarlet. I think if he had felt his own pulse, he would have been astonished at how far from normal his heart beats were at that moment.

“I have brought you the wallet from the Devil’s Gorge. Here it is for you to open!”

“Oh, Dr. Wright! Is that where you were going when Gwen saw you so early this morning?”

“Yes!”

“I think you are very good to take that tramp for Gwen,” she said, taking the bulky wallet in her hand.

“I didn’t take it for Gwen, but for you.” Gwen had left the tent for a moment.

“But you would have done it for Gwen, I am sure.”

“Yes, of course, but perhaps not on an empty stomach,” laughed the doctor. “But why don’t you open the pocketbook?”

“Because it is Gwen’s! She must be the one to open it.”

“But you are not sure it is hers. I brought it for you to have the pleasure of opening it.”

“Yes, I am sure it is hers, and I’d take more pleasure in seeing her open it than doing it myself.”

Just then Gwen returned with a pitcher of fresh water. Helen held up the wallet and said:

“Did you ever see this before?”

Gwen turned pale and her steady little hands, that could usually carry a brimming cup of coffee safely to its destination without once slopping over, shook so that she spilled the water from the pitcher.

“Oh, Miss Helen! Where did you find it?”

“Never mind now where we found it! You open it and see if you can identify it,” said Helen kindly. She realized that Gwen was to have excitement enough in opening this wallet of her father’s, lost as it had been for five years, without having to picture, as she would surely do, his death, the fall from the cliff and this pocketbook slipping from his coat and lodging in the tree.

The wallet was evidently an expensive one: alligator skin lined with Russian leather. The silver clasp was rusty and Gwen’s trembling hands could hardly force the sliding catch, but Helen motioned for Dr. Wright not to assist her. She felt, somehow, that the girl would rather do it all herself. They were silent while the little English girl fumbled the lock and finally sprung it. The wallet was stuffed full of papers and letters. In one compartment was some silver, several gold pieces and some English coins. The papers were yellow with age, but so stout was the alligator skin that the many rains that must have fallen during the five years the wallet had been wedged in that scrub oak’s branches, had not wet them nor defaced them.

“Be very careful, Gwen, there may be all kinds of precious documents in there,” exclaimed Helen, as some of the papers floated to the floor of the tent and some fluttered to her own cot.

Gwen had sunk to the floor in a little heap and was sobbing.

“I can remember so well how my father used to open up this pocketbook and pore over these letters. I was never allowed to touch it. He kept his money in it and receipts and things.”

“Look, here is a receipt for one thousand dollars in cash payment for land!” exclaimed Helen, as a yellow slip of paper fell on her coverlet. The paper was written in a bold black hand so that any one might read it:

The signature was in violet ink and very shaky. Helen recognized it as old Dean’s writing, as when he sent up any produce to the camp from his store at Greendale, it had been her duty to go over the bill which invariably accompanied the goods.

“Why, Gwen, Gwen! That old wretch has cheated you out of your land! Do you know, he handed over to Father, for money he owed him, land that did not belong to him, and this minute our camp is built on your property?” Helen was very much excited, and as for Gwen,—she was pale and trembling. “I’d like to get up out of this bed and go horse-whip him——”

“Please, can I do it for you?” from the doctor. “But wouldn’t it be better to get a lawyer to take the matter up and have the thing legally adjusted?”

“We-e-ll, ye-s! Maybe—— But I’d certainly like to make that old man suffer some. Wouldn’t you, Gwen?” But the little English girl was so busy sorting the papers that had fallen from her father’s old wallet that she did not hear.

“What is that in the back of the pocketbook where the other fastening is?” asked the doctor.

“Money and more money! Why, Gwen, look at the bills!”

Helen was right. In a neat and orderly manner in yet another closed compartment of the wallet were placed greenbacks and yellowbacks of high denominations. The girls feverishly counted out $1,500.

“No wonder it was so fat! We had better not say anything about having all this money in camp. It ought to be in the bank, Gwen, as it might be stolen from you. Dr. Wright will deposit it for you in Richmond and you can draw on it as you need.”

Gwen handed over the bills to the young man without a moment’s delay.

“Wait now, let’s count it again to make sure, and I will give you a receipt for the amount.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary, is it, Miss Helen?”

“Certainly not!” And then Helen blushed to think how short a time had elapsed since she had expressed all kinds of doubts about the honesty of this man, because, forsooth, he had been given power of attorney over a paltry $83.59! Here she was advising this little mountain waif to hand over to Dr. Wright what seemed to them a large fortune without even a receipt.

George Wright smiled and quietly wrote a receipt for the amount.

“It would be safer to let me carry this money for you because it might get out that you have it, and it would be easier to get it from you than me. I will deposit it at the Virginia Trust Co. in Richmond, and will send you the bank book immediately. You can invest it or not as you see fit. It would bring in forty-five dollars a year if you put it in the savings bank.”

“Oh, that would be enough for me to go to school on and even be a boarder at school! But I want some of it to buy a new mule for Aunt Mandy. Josephus is so old and feeble.”

“You had better not tell Josh you think so,” laughed the doctor. “But will you be contented, child, just to stay on in the mountains for the rest of your life?”

“This is the only home I have. Where else can I go?”

“You can go wherever we are,” cried Helen impulsively, and Dr. Wright’s admiration for her was increased if possible.

“Oh, Miss Helen, you are so good! But Aunt Mandy needs me and maybe if I stay here I can make Josh wash, even in the winter time.”

“Well, maybe you can,” said the doctor kindly, “and it is a great thing to be needed and to see some chance of improving your fellow man. You could, with economy, get yourself through college on this money.”

“And then, of course, you own the land our camp is built on,” remembered Helen. “That is a thousand dollars more.”

“But I don’t want that,” exclaimed Gwen. “It has been so wonderful to have all of you here and so good to me.”

“But, my dear child, the land belongs to you and this Abner Dean will have to be the one to suffer, not you or the Carters. If you will let me, I will consult a lawyer in Richmond and have him take hold of the matter. Don’t you find a deed of some sort among those papers?”

There was no deed among the papers and, in fact, one never was found. The mystery was never solved how such an intelligent man as St. John Brownell evidently was had contented himself with a mere receipt for the $1,000 paid Abner Dean. He was perhaps suffering so with the nervous complaint which finally caused his death, that he had accepted the simplest method which presented itself to establish himself in a place where he hoped to find some peace.

While Helen was confined to her couch with the spurious sprained ankle, she helped Gwen unravel the story of her life from the letters found in the wonderful wallet. It was not such an extraordinary story, after all. St. John Brownell was of good family and education but evidently of small means, being the younger son of one of the many daughters of an impoverished earl. He had married young, come to America, and taken up teaching as a profession. His wife had died and then had come on him the strange malady that had caused him so much agony. Cities were hateful to him and he had decided that his small patrimony would serve best in some locality where the living was very inexpensive. Helen gathered from some of the letters that this patrimony amounted to about $3,000. He seemed to have arrived in the mountains with that much money in cash. He had bought the one hundred acres of land on the side of the mountain, hoping to improve it, possibly by going into Albemarle pippins. Gwen thought he had perhaps put his money into cash expecting to place it in a bank in Virginia; but as his malady gained on him all money dealings became very hateful and irksome to him, and he had evidently procrastinated until he had become in the habit of just carrying that roll of money around with him.

Gwen could recall nothing of her mother, but she remembered being in a kindergarten in New York and of course remembered coming to Virginia, and her father’s every characteristic was as fresh in her mind as though he had died only yesterday. The poor man had never been too miserable to be anything but gentle and loving to his little daughter, and he had spared no pains in teaching her, so that at nine years, her age when he had died, Gwen had been quite as well educated as many a child of twelve.

“Aren’t you going to write to some of your father’s family, Gwen?” asked Helen, who had become so absorbed in the research that she felt like a full-fledged detective.

“I think not,” and Gwen shook her head sadly. “He must have gone completely out of their lives. I can’t remember his getting any letters after we came to Virginia. Some day, maybe, I can make enough money to go to England, and then I will hunt them up and peep at them through the shutters, and if they look kind and nice, I’ll make myself known to them.”

“Perhaps you are right. They may be all kinds of pills and they might come over here and take you back with them whether you wanted to go or not. And you might have to live in stuffy chambers in London and never see the mountains any more.”

“Dreadful! That would kill me!”

And so Gwen went on living with kind Aunt Mandy, little by little cleaning up that good woman until she became reconciled to water and almost fond of it.

George Wright consulted a lawyer friend who took Gwen’s affairs in hand and by skillful management brought old Abner Dean to the realization that it would be best for him to execute a deed to the land bought by St. John Brownell, arranging it so Gwen would own the property without any string tied to it. He was forced to pay the money to Mr. Carter, and then the girls, having unwittingly built on Gwen’s land, rented it from her. Land had increased twofold in value since the Englishman had made his purchase, and the timber had grown so there was every indication that by careful management Gwen would have a good deal more money to add to her bank account.

Before Dr. Wright went back to Richmond, he told Helen he had killed the snake, if not the one who had taken a nip out of her tendon Achilles, at least one just as good or just as bad, whichever way she chose to look at it.

“Poor old snake!” exclaimed Helen. “He shouldn’t have been punished for acting according to his nature. I am the one that should have been punished, because I hope I acted not according to my nature.”

“Well, haven’t you been punished?”

Helen said nothing. She felt in her heart that she had not been punished at all but had been favored, in that through that rattlesnake she had gained a real friend in the young doctor.