At ten o'clock Mother
Shaughnessy, after hanging uneasily about the porch a moment or two,
gave muttered voice to a suggestion that other women had shrunk from
mentioning:
"Has she been tould Miss Angela and--him--is no kin at all, at all?"
"I don't want her told," said Mrs. Graham briefly.
And so Natzie was still there, sitting sleepless in the soft and
radiant moonlight, when toward twelve o'clock Graham came forth from
his last visit for the night, and she lifted up her head and looked
him dumbly in the face,--dumbly, yet imploring a word of hope or
comfort,--and it was more than the soft-hearted Scot could bear.
"Major," said he, as he gently laid a big hand upon the black and
tangled wealth of hair, "that lad in yonder would have been beyond the
ken of civilization days ago if it hadn't been for this little savage.
I'm thinking he'll sleep none the worse for her watching over him.
Todd's there for the night, the same that attended him before, and she
won't be strange with him--or I'm mistaken."
"Why?" asked Plume, mystified.
"I'm not saying, until Blakely talks for himself. For one reason I
don't _know_. For another, _he's_ the man to tell, if anybody," and a
toss of the head toward the dark doorway told who was meant by "he."
"D'you mean you'd have this girl squatting there by Blakely's bedside
the rest of the night?" asked the commander, ruffled in spirit.
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