Greatheart

He pressed his lips upon them closely, lingeringly. "Better now, sweetheart?" he whispered.

And she, clinging to him, found voice to answer, "Nothing matters now you have come."

The consciousness of his protecting care filled her with a rapture almost too great to be borne. She throbbed in his arms, pressing closer, ever closer. And the grim Shadow of Death receded from the threshold. She knew that she was safe.

It was soon after this that the thought of Isabel came to her, and tremulously she begged him to go to her. But he would not suffer her out of his arms.

"The others can see to her," he said. "You are my care."

She thrilled at the words, but she would not be satisfied. "She has been so good to me," she told him pleadingly "See, I am wearing her coat."

"But for her you would never have come to this," he made brief reply, and she thought his words were stern.

Then, as she would not be pacified, he lifted her like a child and held her so that she could look down upon Isabel, lying inert and senseless against the doctor's knee.

"Oh, is she dead?" whispered Dinah, awe-struck.

"I don't know," he made answer, and by the tightening of his arms she knew that her safety meant more to him at the moment than that of Isabel or anyone else in the world.

But in a second or two she heard Isabel moan, and was reassured.

"She is coming round," the doctor said. "She is not so far gone as the other lassie."

Dinah wondered hazily what he could mean, wondered if by any chance he suspected that long and dreary wandering of her spirit up and down the mountain-side. She nestled her head down against Eustace's shoulder with a feeling of unutterable thankfulness that she had returned in time.

Her impressions after that were of a very dim and shadowy description. She supposed the brandy had made her sleepy. Very soon she drifted off into a state of semi-consciousness in which she realized nothing but the strong holding of his arms. She even vaguely wondered after a time whether this also were not a dream, for other fantasies began to crowd about her. She rocked on a sea of strange happenings on which she found it impossible to focus her mind. It seemed to have broken adrift as it were--a rudderless boat in a gale. But still that sense of security never wholly left her. Dreaming or waking, the force of his personality remained with her.