After the young people had departed on the morning of that eventful day, Miss Helen Campbell settled herself in a hammock on the upper porch with a novel and two new magazines. She loved the “children,” as she called them, and the sound of their voices and laughter was as music to her ears, but occasionally she enjoyed a peaceful morning to herself without any chatter to disturb her quietude.

Who would have imagined as she sat there idly swinging in the hammock, that the dainty little lady was all the way to sixty years old? Her eyes were as blandly blue and clear as a child’s; her complexion had never lost its peach blossom glow, and the fine network of wrinkles around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth was only faintly visible.

“But I’m getting old,” she thought. “Those long trips have rejuvenated my spirits but my body is tired. I haven’t the physique for adventuring any longer. I don’t think I could stand a shock of any kind, great or small.”

Her thoughts broke off at this point and she idly touched the railing of the porch with one of her little feet and set the hammock to a gentle motion like a rocking cradle.

“No, I shall not put myself in the way of shocks. I am glad we are not touring this summer; just taking life peacefully——”

Again her thoughts broke off. Her eyes wandered across the wide vista of valley flanked by a range of mountains. The landscape was flecked by great shadows cast by lazily moving ribbons of cloud. The foliage of the trees and the undergrowth on the opposite mountains were like rugs of velvet. One might imagine a gigantic figure stretched out on the soft green patches of forest. There were no harsh outlines to the mountains. Their rugged edges were veiled and softened by the shadows of the passing clouds. Miss Campbell closed her eyes.

“Life is very pleasant,” she thought, “even at sixty.”

After a long dreamy period as untroubled as a summer sea, some instinct compelled her to open her eyes, and she found herself looking straight into the eyes of Mrs. Lupo who was standing at the foot of the hammock. Mrs. Lupo held her hands behind her back. Miss Campbell noticed at once that the woman’s expression had changed. She had lost that look of a shy gentle animal. Her eyes had narrowed into little slits and her upper lip was drawn back showing an even row of glistening teeth. Without taking her eyes off Mrs. Lupo’s, Miss Campbell sat up very straight and stiff.

“Well, what do you want?” she demanded, always holding the woman’s gaze with hers.Mrs. Lupo moved a step nearer, still with her hands behind her back.

“Stand where you are,” ordered Miss Campbell, fired with superhuman courage and never once shifting her gaze. “Stand where you are,” she repeated. There was not a tremor in her voice. “Now, give me what you are hiding behind you.”

For at least a moment the two women stood looking at each other. If Miss Campbell had flinched, there is no telling what the half-savage creature, insane with rage, might have done.

And even now, with a swift movement, Mrs. Lupo brandished a long carving knife in Miss Campbell’s face.

“Drop that instantly,” thundered Miss Campbell in a voice that did not seem to be her own.

But the force of her splendid will and courage struck home. The carving knife slipped from Mrs. Lupo’s hand and stood upright between them in the board floor of the porch.“Get down on your knees,” ordered Miss Campbell, and all this time she had never taken her eyes off Mrs. Lupo’s.

The knife was still swaying on the point of its blade, as the woman sank to the floor in a quivering, sobbing heap.

“What do you mean by coming to me like this?” demanded Miss Campbell.

“Your daughter, she try cut my throat this morning with same. I take revenge,” answered Mrs. Lupo between her sobs.

“Nonsense! Absurd!”

“She have dislike me from first,” went on Mrs. Lupo, who seemed to eliminate all articles from her conversation. “She joke at me. She buy berries of girl I hate.”

Miss Campbell leaned against the rail and watched the woman crouched at her feet like a whipped dog. Only an instant did she allow the thought to come to her that she was alone in camp with a half-crazed savage.“She is a very weak, pitiable object,” she said to herself. “I must manage her and I shall. I am not afraid.”

Suddenly she leaned over and put her hand very softly on the woman’s shoulder.

“I am so sorry for you,” she said. “Won’t you let me help you? I think you are much too fine and capable to fly into rages like this. What is the reason of it?”

“Not know,” answered Mrs. Lupo. “When they come, I see red. I wish to break up—kill.”

“Do you love your husband?”

“Yes,” answered the other with so much eloquence of expression that Miss Campbell knew she spoke the truth.

“And he loves you?”

“He loves me, but not so much. He leaves me for long time,—alone.”

“Has he ever seen you in a rage?”

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Lupo in a low voice, her head sinking on her breast.“Of course, then, that is why he leaves you. Men like gentleness in a woman. A violent-tempered wife never keeps her husband’s love. If you were gentle and quiet, your husband would take you with him to the village. But you are jealous and uncontrolled. You make a spectacle of yourself and of him. You look very ugly as you looked a while ago, like an angry animal instead of a handsome young woman. Try being gentle and always looking pretty and see how it works.”

Mrs. Lupo looked up. Miss Campbell had captured her interest and she was listening to that sage spinster’s advice with entire attention.

“You think me handsome woman?”

“Very, when you are in a good temper.”

“Suppose I can’t keep back anger?”

“The next time your eyes see red, make a little prayer. It will always be answered.”

“To Christ?” asked Mrs. Lupo, who had been to a mission school as a girl.“Yes, to Christ, who never spoke a harsh word even when He was struck in the face and spit upon and finally nailed to a cross.”

“What shall I say?” asked the other, as interested as a child.

“When you feel the rage coming on, say over and over: ‘Oh, Christ, take my anger from me and make me gentle and kind.’”

Mrs. Lupo repeated the prayer several times.

“And it will come true?” she asked.

“Always, always. Try it and see.”

At last the half-breed rose to her feet. The knife stood upright between them swaying on its blade.

“You forgive?” she asked.

“I forgive.”

“I will go away. I am afraid yet when the daughter comes. There is still hate here,” she pointed to her temples. “But it will be gone if I stay away. When Lupo goes to village he stays long time. It is better for me not to see him when he comes back. Until I learn, I will not see him no more. Good-by. I’m thankful to you.”

Mrs. Lupo departed, leaving the knife where it had fallen. It was on the tip of Miss Campbell’s tongue to say:

“You must not leave me alone.” But she checked herself. She doubted if she could exert her will another time like that. Already beads of perspiration stood out on her brows. A feeling of extreme lassitude crept over her and she slipped back into the hammock with a sensation of nausea. Then unconsciousness bound her with invisible cords and the brave little woman fainted dead away.

As Mrs. Lupo turned into the gallery, she glanced back but she only saw the train of Miss Campbell’s white wrapper fluttering from the hammock in the breeze.

There had been several loud raps downstairs, but to Miss Campbell, fighting her way slowly back to consciousness, it sounded hundreds of miles away, like spirit rapping; or perhaps it was the pounding of her own pulses. A man entered the living room. He was of medium height and spare with a lean brown face, and he was dressed as men usually dress for walking trips, in knickerbockers, heavy shoes laced well up the leg, a gray flannel shirt open at the neck with a brown silk tie. He wore a pith helmet; on his back was strapped a flat knapsack, and he carried a cane and a telescope. As he hurried through the living room, he tossed his helmet into a chair. There was a bald spot on his head fringed with reddish hair turning gray. His features were distinguished and because of a certain dignity with which he carried himself, a certain air of command and confidence, people were apt to wonder who he was.

“It was upstairs, I am certain,” the visitor remarked to himself, glancing into the empty kitchen and then mounting the rustic steps to the upper sleeping porch. With quick, comprehensive eyes he took in the five white cots standing in a row, on the porch the group of wicker chairs, the murderous looking knife, swaying on the tip of its shining blade, and lastly the high-backed canvas sleeping hammock from which trailed the train of a white muslin dress.

“Whew!” he exclaimed, under his breath.

For a moment it looked as if something unspeakably dreadful had happened that beautiful morning, and his fears were not set at rest even when he bounded past the knife and stood leaning over Miss Campbell’s half conscious form.

“Water,” she gasped faintly.

“I wonder if there’s a bathroom,” he thought, running along the porch to the nearest door after the one leading to the passage. “Of course they always have them in these so-called camps,” he added, catching the flash of a porcelain tub beyond. In another moment he had wet Miss Campbell’s lips from a glass of water and was dabbing her temples with the end of a wet towel. “Better now?” he asked, as she opened her heavenly blue eyes.

She nodded with a faint smile and closed them again.

“Curious how a doctor is always finding work to do even in the wilderness,” he thought, feeling Miss Helen’s pulse. With an exclamation, he hurried back to the bathroom, and among a perfect army of tooth powder and talcum powder boxes,—“enough for half a dozen people,” he thought,—he spied a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia. He mixed a dose in the glass with professional dexterity and hurried back.

“Just as well I happened along,” he thought, moistening her lips with the mixture. “That does the trick,” he added, as she presently opened her eyes again and swallowed a little of the ammonia and water.

The white, pinched look left her face, the color crept back to her cheeks, and she gave a sigh of relief as she shifted her position in the hammock.

“My pillows?” she asked, feeling for the pillows which he had slipped from under her head to the floor.

“Better lie flat for a while,” he ordered in a tone of authority. “I wonder where her people are?” the doctor added to himself, glancing again at the five cot beds. Then he drew up a chair and watched Miss Helen Campbell as she dropped into a doze.

In a little while she exclaimed in a much stronger tone of voice:

“Please take me out of this wobbly thing; I want to lie on my own bed.” The walking-doctor promptly lifted her in his arms like a little child and deposited her on one of the cots. Her hands were cold, and he covered her with a Roman blanket that lay on the foot of the bed. Then he found two hot water bottles, marched down stairs, heated a kettle of water on the kerosene stove, searched for beef tea in the ice chest and by good luck found half a jar. With the water bottles at her feet and a little beef tea to nourish her, Miss Campbell at last fell into a deep sleep, while the doctor, sitting near at hand, read one of the magazines and, occasionally tip-toeing to her bedside, listened to her breathing and felt her pulse.

Toward late afternoon, he descended into the lower regions of the log house and foraged for food. He found crackers and cheese, a tin of beans and a bottle of ginger ale. Having refreshed himself, he was about to return to his patient when Mr. Lupo staggered into the kitchen with a market basket on his arm.

“Where is my wife?” he asked in a thick voice.

“She is not here and you’d better go, too, quick,” answered the doctor.

Mr. Lupo looked at him with an ugly expression, his eyes narrowing, as his wife’s had done when she had approached Miss Campbell with the carving knife.“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am a doctor.”

“Has anything happened? My wife, she is crazy when she is mad. Is that the reason why she ran away?”

“Does your wife flourish carving knives?”

Mr. Lupo retreated with a terrified expression.

“She has—?” he was too frightened to finish.

“No,” replied the doctor. “The lady was too strong for her here.” He touched his forehead with his finger.

“She was not touched—the lady?”

“No, but she has collapsed from fright,—she is very ill,—I could not answer for her recovery if you gave her another shock.”

Without a word, Mr. Lupo rushed out of doors, jumped into a rickety wagon drawn by an old mountain-climbing horse and in another instant was clattering down the road.

Toward evening Miss Campbell grew stronger. The doctor raised her head and fed her by the spoonful a cup of malted milk, also found in the ice chest.

“Billie?” she said.

“That’s my name,” answered the doctor. “William for long.”

“Nice boy,” she added, patting him on the shoulder, with a very small limp hand. “Have the children got back?”

“They will be here pretty soon, now,” he answered, frowning and glancing at his watch.

“Ben is a safe guide. They are safe with him. Wake me when they arrive,” and turning over on her side, Miss Campbell went back to sleep.

Occasionally the doctor scanned the side of the mountain with his telescope.

“The children are taking a long time,” he said to himself. “They had better look alive, if they want to make it before nightfall.”

But night fell and there was no sign of the wanderers. The doctor lit a cigar and watched the shadows creep up the side of the mountains. He listened to the last twittering of the birds and then a silence, profound and deep, settled on the camp.

Again he descended to the living room of the camp now in darkness. Presently he lighted the green shaded lamp and two lanterns, hanging one at the front of the house and the other at the back. He unpacked the market basket and cooked himself some supper, and finally with a glass of milk and a slice of bread for Miss Campbell when she waked, returned to the upper sleeping porch.

“A telescope is an excellent thing,” he observed, settling himself in a steamer chair, a lamp on the floor beside him with a tin protector to keep draughts from the flame. “I saw the woman plainly enough flourishing the carving knife. It must have been sheer force of will on the part of this little lady that made her drop it.”

And now the darkness had indeed fallen, a black, impenetrable curtain. Only the outline of the opposite range could be seen. It seemed to have closed in on the camp, and like a gigantic wall, to shut it off from the outer world. An owl hooted in a tree not far away and from a cleft in the mountains came the weird song of the whippoorwill.