--In The Wilderness

The golden sun was high in the heavens. Its splendor was pouring down upon a gently steaming earth. But all its joyous light, all its perfect beneficence could not undo one particle of the havoc the long dark hours of night had wrought.

High up on a shattered eminence, where a sea of tumbled rock marked the face of Devil's Hill, where the great hot lake had been held suspended, Joan and Buck gazed out upon the battle-ground of nature's forces.

Presently the girl's eyes came back to the face of her lover. She could not long keep them from the face, which, such a few hours ago, she had believed she would never behold again in life. She felt as though he were one returned to her from the grave, and feared lest she should wake to find his returning only a dream.

He was a strange figure. The tattered remains of his clothing were scarcely enough to cover his nakedness, and Joan, with loving, unskilled hands, had lavered and dressed his wounds with portions of her own undergarments and the waters of the creek, whither, earlier, she had laboriously supported his enfeebled body. But Providence had spared him an added mercy besides bringing him back to life. It seemed a sheer miracle that his bones had been left whole. His flesh was torn, his whole body was terribly bruised and lacerated, but that worst of all disasters in life had been spared him, and he was left with the painful use of every limb.