He moaned gratefully. “It's the first time I've been out of pain for I don't know how many days and nights. Nancy!” he burst out in all recognition of her goodness, “I oughtn't to have left you.” She had been kneeling before him in dressing his hurt, and then in critically regarding her handiwork, she got to her feet. “I know you oughtn't,” she retorted, “but I'm glad you done it. And I'm thankful every breath I draw. And now I want you to _go_. And don't you think I done what I done out of love for you, Joseph Dylks. I'd 'a' done it for any hurt or hungry dog.” [Illustration: She had begun to wash his wound, very gently, though she spoke so roughly, while he murmured with the pain and with the comfort of the pain] Dylks got to his feet too, with little moans for the stiffness in his joints. “I know you would, Nancy,” he said humbly, “but all the same I won't forget it. If there was anything I could do to show--” “There's something you could do besides drownin' yourself in the creek, which I don't ask you: in the first place because I don't want your death on my hands, and in the next place because you're the un-fittin'est man to die that I can think of; but there's something else, and you know it without my tellin' you, and that is to stop all this, now and forever. Don't you pretend you don't know what I mean!” “I know what you mean, Nancy, and the good Lord knows I would be glad enough to do it if I could. But I wouldn't know how to begin.” “Begin,” she said with a scornful glance at the long tangle of his hair, “begin by cuttin' off that horse's tail of yours, and then stop snortin' like a horse.” He shook his head hopelessly. “It wouldn't do, Nancy. They wouldn't let me draw back now. They would kill me.” “They?” “The--the--Little Flock,” he answered shamefacedly. “The Herd of the Lost will kill you if you don't.” She said it not in mocking, but in realization of the hopeless case, and not without pity. But at his next words, she hardened her heart again. “I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. I have nowhere to lay my head.” “Don't you use them holy words, you wicked wretch! And if you're hintin' at hidin' in my house, you can't do it--not with Jane here--_she_ would kill you, I believe--and not without her.” “No, Nancy. I can see that. But where can I go? Even that place in the woods, they're watching that, and they would have me if I tried to go back.” From an impulse as of indifference rather than consideration she said, “Go to Squire Braile. He let you off; let him take care of you.” “Nancy!” he exclaimed. “I thought of that.” She gathered up the basin and the towel she brought, and without looking at him again she said, “Well, go, then,” and turned and left him where he stood. XVI