“Dear, does your shoulder pain you now? I'm awfully heavy to be leaning on you like this!”
“You're not hurting me a bit. On the contrary, your touch, your presence, are life to me!”
“Quite sure you're comfy, boy?”
“Positive.”
“And happy?”
“To the limit.”
“I'm so glad. Because I am, too. I'm awfully sleepy, Allan. Do you mind if I take just a little, tiny nap?”
For all answer he patted her, and smoothed her hair, her cheek, her full, warm throat.
Presently by her slow, gentle breathing he knew she was asleep.
For a long time he half-lay there against the oak, softly swathed in his bear-skin, on the odorous bed of fir, holding her in his arms, looking into the dancing firelight.
And night wore on, calm, perfumed, gentle; and the thoughts of the man were long, long thoughts--thoughts “that do often lie too deep for tears.”
CHAPTER V. DEADLY PERIL
Pages on pages would not tell the full details of the following week--the talks they had, the snaring and shooting of small game, the fishing, the cleaning out of the bungalow, and the beginnings of some order in the estate, the rapid healing of Stern's arm, and all the multifarious little events of their new beginnings of life there by the river-bank.
But there are other matters of more import than such homely things; so now we come to the time when Stern felt the pressing imperative of a return to the tower. For he lacked tools in every way; he needed them to build furniture, doors, shutters; to clear away the brush and make the place orderly, rational and beautiful; to start work on his projected laboratory and power-plant; for a thousand purposes.
He wanted his binoculars, his shotgun and rifles, and much ammunition, as well as a boat-load of canned supplies and other goods. Instruments, above all, he had to have.