"Fine!" he cried. "That wood will burn like tinder. It looks to be very old." A gust of damp wind from the door blew the light out. Again they were in the dark. "Wait," he advised. "I'll gather up some of that dry bark, and then we'll set it on fire." "Yes; it will burn easily," she agreed. He noted that she spoke as if she were shivering with cold, and he made haste to get the bark. With his hands full, he groped to the chimney and bent down over the ashes in the fireplace. She picked up a match and succeeded in striking it. She held it against the heap of bark. The bark ignited. He hastened for more, and then, as the flame was now sufficient, he added small pieces of wood, and then larger sticks. Soon a fine fire was crackling and blazing in the crude stone fireplace. "You must get dry," he said, taking his coat from her shoulders. "Everything depends on it." She laughed almost merrily, as they stood side by side in the rising steam from their drying clothing. "You must sit down, and put out your feet to the fire," he declared. "I'll make a seat for you." He brought some logs from the corner and made two heaps of them about five feet apart, and then raised one of the loose floor boards, and laid it across, thus forming a sort of bench. She smiled gratefully; sat down and put out her feet to the flames. "You must take off your shoes and stockings and dry them," he said, with the firm confidence of a family doctor. "Must!" She repeated the word to herself, and bit her lip; she made no motion to obey his wishes. "Surely you are not offended at what I said," he went on, after a little silence. "It is a serious thing, you know. Dry feet at such a time as this are more important than a dry body." "Oh, I don't mind!" she answered, and she bent down and began to fumble the strings of her shoes; but the water had drawn the knot tight and her fingers were benumbed with cold. "You must permit me, Miss Rowland," Charles said, calmly. He sank on his knees before her and, without waiting for her consent, he skilfully loosened the knotted string and drew her shoe off. "Now the other, please." She thrust it out, but rather reluctantly. "You have such a strange way about you!" she said, coldly. "That is, I mean--sometimes." The string he was now working on seemed to be more tightly tied, and she heard him mutter something impatiently: "I don't want to cut it." (Surely he had not heard her last remark, she thought.) But he evidently had heard, for when he had removed the other shoe he said, "So you think I have a strange way about me at times, do you?"