Briefly Hildegarde explained. As she moved toward the door, she caught an expression on the sunken face so arresting that straightway she said to herself: “What is a starving dog more than a dying man, that I should come to help the one and flee the other?” “I am afraid you are very ill.” “Yes,” he answered quietly. “There’s someone at the settlement who looks after you?” He smiled faintly. “They’ve given me up as a bad investment.” “Oh!” broke from the girl’s lips, as she leaned forward and then caught herself up. Was the hermit not dead after all! Was she face to face at last with the discoverer of the Mother Lode? If so, she mustn’t seem to know. “Isn’t there any doctor here?” she added hurriedly. “There’s a fellow they _call_ ‘doctor.’” “Then let me go for him.” “He’s off prospecting.” “When will he be back?” “After I’m gone, I guess.” “Oh, you are leaving here?” and the moment she said it she felt the cruelty of the question. But he only answered “Yes,” and left her to miss or to divine his meaning. Looking in his face she forgot his character of hermit, and fell to wondering whom he had in the world to care about his leaving it. Instinctively she knew that a man with such a spirit looking out of eyes like those—for a man like this to die, meant to some one far away the worst that could befall. And suddenly she felt that she was enviable, being there, if in some way she could help him. What was there she might do? He glanced at the foot of the bed, where the old dog lay at his feet. “When did you say you were going back to your ship?” “Not for an hour or so,” she said. “More than long enough for me to—when did you eat last?” “If you’d give me a little water,” he spoke huskily. She went to a zinc bucket that stood in the corner. “I’m afraid this isn’t fresh,” she said. “Yes. An old fellow brought it only an hour ago. There’s the cup.” She followed his eyes to a rusty condensed-milk can, which she filled and rinsed, saying cheerfully: “Then some one _does_ look after you?” “No, it isn’t after me the old scoundrel looks.” With great eyes darkening, he lowered his voice: “Is he hanging about still? A sort of tramp with—” “No, the man I think you mean has gone out to the gulch.” “H’m! Tired of waiting! We saw that in his face when he brought in the water, didn’t we, Ky?” The dog raised her head. “Yes, he wasn’t anything like as afraid of you, Ky, as he used to be. Time’s short.” He pulled himself up and fell to work with a knife upon the piece of wood that lay on the gray blanket. Suspiciousness has made him brain-sick, thought the girl. She dried the dripping can on her handkerchief as she looked over at the dog. “Poor Ky. What happened to her eye?”