Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/46

 38  him a box. He was almost pathetically grateful. Tish was still staring at him. To find on Thunder Cloud Mountain a young man who quoted Shakespeare and had lost everything but his good name—even Stevenson could hardly have had a more unusual adventure.

"What are you going to do with the matches?" she demanded as he limped to the cave mouth.

"Light a fire if I can find any wood dry enough to light. If I can't Well, you remember the little match-seller in Hans Christian Andersen's story, who warmed her fingers with her own matches until they were all gone and she froze to death!"

Hans Christian Andersen and Shakespeare!

"Can't you find a cave?" asked Tish.

"I had a cave," he said, "but"

"But what?"

"Three charming women found it while I was out on the mountainside. They needed the shelter more than I, and so"

"What!" Tish exclaimed. "This is your cave?"

"Not at all; it is yours. The fact that I had been stopping in it gave me no right that I was not happy to waive."

"There was nothing of yours in it," Tish said suspiciously.