Once more she sat down by the bunk, after she had given Maigan a big feed of oats, with a small remnant of the bacon grease. She felt humbled now, as if her accusations constituted some unforgivable, despicable sin. This man had never intended to do her the slightest harm. He really never knew that she was coming. And through her stupid clumsiness his life was now ebbing. The doctor's long words sounded dreadfully in her ears: general sepsis, blood poisoning, a system overwhelmed by the toxines of virulent microbes; they reverberated in her ears like so many sentences of death. Was there any hope that this outflowing life would ever turn in its course and return like an incoming tide? Would she again see him able to lift up his head, to speak in words no longer dictated by the vagaries of delirium? She would give anything to be able to ask his pardon humbly after his mind cleared again. Oh, it was unthinkable that he should die, that the end might be coming soon, and that she must go forth with that unspeakable load of misery in her heart. Maigan restlessly kept on coming to her and placing his head in her lap, as if seeking comfort. Once she bent over and put her cheek against his jaw and furry ear. He was a companion in misery. When she lifted up her head again to stare once more at the sufferer, with eyes heavily ringed with black, he slowly opened his own and looked at her vaguely, for at first there was not the slightest sign of recognition in them. Presently, however, the girl saw something that looked like a faint smile. "How--how long have I been asleep?" he asked, weakly. "And have--have you been here all the time?" She nodded, conscious that her heart was now beating with excitement, and his eyes closed again. But his hand had sought the one she had laid on the blanket and rested on it, for a few moments. It was the ever-recurring call of the man for the comfort of a woman's touch, for the protection his strength gathers from her weakness. "You--you're ever so good and kind," he said again, in a low hoarse voice, after which he kept still again, for the longest time.