She lifted her head and looked at him wonderingly. "I don't know what you mean. My Paul is good! Why, he is here in the wilderness solely for love of humanity, giving his strength, his skill, his time, and all that he has to the service of his country and his kind, just because he is good, and for no other reason. There is no better man living, not even Father Orin, not even you, sir," throwing her arms around his knee and giving it a loving squeeze. "And you know it, too, you are only laughing at me. I don't mind at all. I am too happy to care for teasing." She laid her head back on his knees and fell happily silent, gazing dreamily into the flames. The wind was rising, and went roaring through the trees around the house; but she heard it with the peaceful feeling of shelter and safety that only happiness feels in wild weather. Presently she asked him if he thought that souls could speak to one another. "It was at Anvil Rock," she said as simply as if she had been thinking aloud. "I had never thought about loving him. He had never told me that he loved me, but I knew then that he did. Something told me while he was lying on the ground like a dead man. What do you think it could have been? What was it?" Looking up she saw the shrinking in his face, and she thought it came from his dislike of any mention of painful subjects; but her whole heart was in this question so that she could not let it go without pressing it a little further. "But tell me, dearest, can souls communicate without speech or sign--if they only love enough?" she urged. "You are a fanciful, romantic child," he said, trying to smile and to speak lightly. "Why--the man was an utter stranger then--you didn't know him at all." He had taken her chin in his hand, and his eyes were now looking steadily into hers; but the courage of the moment fled when she involuntarily drew away. He was alarmed at the effect of this one slight effort. "Such things are too subtle for an old man, my child, too subtle, perhaps, for any man either young or old," he said hurriedly and confusedly. "You women see and feel many things that fly high above our heads. And then I am duller than usual to-night. I am anxious about business matters. The river is rising rapidly, there is danger of a disastrous flood. My boats are not in safe places, and worst of all the Cold Plague broke out to-day on one of them. The boat is tied up to the island. I sent it over there immediately so that you, and the rest of the family, might be in no danger from the spread of the epidemic. But it worries me, and one of the boatmen is said to be dying." "Send for my Paul. He can cure him. The plague-stricken hardly ever die if he can get to them in time."