She looked at him sharply, for he had found the house for her; but he answered with heavy calm. "I don't think it's dear." After that there was a few moments' silence, during which they heard the soft splash of a stream falling into the valley. Then he turned to her with a resolute air. "And now, about those bills? You have put me off once or twice, but I want to see them." Mrs. Olcott colored and hesitated, but she opened a drawer in the table and took out a bundle of papers, which she handed to him. To her surprise and consternation, he counted them before he put them into his pocket. "These are not all. Give me the others." "I can manage about the rest," she protested. "Let me have them; you can't begin here in difficulties." Mrs. Olcott rose and he watched her enter the house with quiet pity. She was not a capable woman, and he was thankful that she had not got into worse embarrassments. She came back, still somewhat flushed, and gave him a few more papers. "I'm afraid I'm a wretchedly bad manager," she confessed. "As soon as my next remittance comes, I will send you a check." "When it suits you," he said, and added thoughtfully: "One of us should tell your husband about this; perhaps it had better be you." She smiled, for he was now and then boyishly ingenuous. He sat directly opposite the gate, where all passers-by could see him, and he had somehow an unfortunate air of being at home in the place. "Yes," she said, "I will write by the first mail. I feel less embarrassed because Tom told me that if I was ever in any difficulty I might consult you. He described you as the right sort--and I have found it true." "I suppose you know that I owe a good deal to your husband," Andrew answered awkwardly. "He told me that you and he were in the field hospital together for a time, and before then he helped you in some way when you were wounded, but he never said much about it. What did he do? You may smoke while you tell me." "I think you ought to know, because it will show the claim Tom has on me." Andrew lighted a cigarette and began in a disjointed manner, for he was not a fluent speaker: "It was a dazzlingly bright morning and getting very hot--our side had been badly cut up in the dark, and we were getting back, a mixed crowd of stragglers, a few miles behind the brigade. Tom and Sergeant Carnally, the Canadian, had no proper business with the wreck of my squadron, but there they were. Anyhow, only half of us were mounted, and when we found ourselves cut off we tried to hold a kopje--the horses back in a hollow, except mine, which was shot as I dismounted. I was fond of the poor faithful brute, and I suppose that made me savage, for I felt that I must get the fellow who killed it." He paused and his face hardened.