s Mansion blood; but
your eyes, Lydia, your dear eyes."

"Which eyes must go to sleep and rest," interrupted the physician,
severely. "Come, Chief, you've seen your son, you've satisfied
yourself that Mrs. Mansion is doing splendidly, so away you go,
or I shall scold."

And George slipped down the staircase, and out into the radiant
July sunshine, where his beloved trees arose about him, grand and
majestic, seeming to understand how full of joy, of exultation,
had been this great new day.

* * * * *

The whims of women are proverbial, but the whims of men are things
never to be accounted for. This beautiful child was but a few weeks
old when Mr. Bestman wrote, announcing to his daughter his
intention of visiting her for a few days.

So he came to the Indian Reserve, to the handsome country home his
Indian son-in-law had built. He was amazed, surprised, delighted.
His English heart revelled in the trees. "Like an Old Country
gentleman's estate in the Counties," he declared. He kissed his
daughter with affection, wrung his son-in-law's hand with a warmth
and cordiality unmistakable in its sincerity, took the baby in his
arms and said over and over, "Oh, you sweet little child! You sweet
little child!" Then the darkness of all those harsh years fell away
from Lydia. She could afford to be magnanimous, so with a sweet
silence, a loving forgetfulness of all the dead miseries and bygone
whip-lashes, she accepted her strange parent just as he presented
himself, in the guise of a man whom the years had changed from
harshness to tenderness, and let herself thoroughly enjoy his
visit.

But when he drove away she had but one thing to say; it was,
"George, I wonder when _your_ father will come to us, when your
_mother_ will come. Oh, I want her to see the baby, for I think my
own mother sees him."

"Some day, dear," he answered hopefully. "They will come some day;
and when they do, be sure it will be to take you to their hearts."

She sighed and shook her head unbelievingly. But the "some day"
that he prophesied, but which she doubted, came in a manner all too
soon--all too unwelcome. The little son had just begun to walk
about nicely, when George Mansion was laid low with a lingering
fever that he had contracted among the marshes where much of his
business as an employee of the Government took him. Evils had begun
to creep into his forest world. The black and subtle evil of the
white man