"Know him!" he echoed, and laughed--a dry, cackling laugh. "I ought to. And I guess he knows me." He shook the inert arm. "Get up, Hugh!" he said. "It's Prendergast!" There flashed through her mind the phrase of the surly hotel-keeper: "His side-partner, Prendergast!" Could it be? Had Hugh really lived in the cabin on which she had so often peered down during those past weeks? And with this chosen crony! She touched Prendergast's arm. "He is ill, I say," she repeated. "He must be cared for at once. Your cabin is on the hillside, isn't it?" "_His_ cabin," he corrected. "A rough place, but it has sheltered us both. I am but guide, philosopher and friend." She bit her lips. "Lift him on my horse," she said. She stooped and put her hands under the twitching shoulders. "I will help you. I am quite strong." With her aid he lifted the swaying form on to the saddle and supported it while Jessica led the way up the darkening road. "Here is the cut-off," he said presently. "Ah, you know it!" for she had turned into the side-path that led along the hill, under the gray, snake-like flume--the shortest route to the grassy shelf on which the cabin stood. The by-way was steep and rugged, and rhododendron clumps caught at her ankles, and once she heard a snake slip over the dry rustle of leaves, but she went on rapidly, dragging at the bridle, turning back now and then anxiously to urge the horse to greater speed. She scarcely heard the offensively honied compliments which Prendergast offered to her courage and resource. Her pulses were throbbing unsteadily, her mind in a ferment. It seemed an eternity they climbed; in reality it was scarcely twenty minutes before they reached the grassy knoll and the cabin whose crazy swinging door stood wide to the night air. She tied the horse, went in and at Prendergast's direction found matches and lit a candle. The bare, two-room interior it revealed, was unkempt and disordered. Rough bunks, a table and a couple of hewn chairs were almost its only furniture. The window was broken and the roof admitted sun and rain. Prendergast laid the man they had brought on one of the bunks and threw over him a shabby blanket. "My dear young lady," he said, "you are a good Samaritan. How shall we thank you, my poor friend here and I?" Jessica had taken money from her pocket and now she held it out to him. "He must have a doctor," she said. "You must fetch one." The yellow eyes fastened on the bill, even while his gesture protested. "You shame me!" he exclaimed. "And yet you are right; it is for him." He folded it and put it into his pocket. "As soon as I have built a fire, I will go for our local _medico_. He will not always come at the call of the luckless miner. All are not so charitable as you." He untied her horse and extended a hand, but she mounted without his help. "He will thank you one day--this friend of mine," he said, "far better than I can do."