earer
to Stephanie.

Steadily they journeyed southward, into lands of warmer sun and fuller
blossom. Flower gave place to promise of fruit on all the wild bushes;
the birds lost their spring songs with which the woods had rung, and
flitted about busily and silently. Never had fairer season visited
those forests, and Dick was alive to every subtle shade and gradation
in all the beauty about him. He noted every point that made for
loveliness in the glades and ravines and waterways, he felt akin to the
very bees and butterflies in their enjoyment of sun and summer. Yet
never did he turn from his purpose, even in thought.

And neither did he rely so utterly upon the Indian; who, feeling that
his influence had somehow lessened, watched closely and wondered more.
Dick was no longer as pliable as of yore, but his moral fibre seemed to
be tougher and less yielding.

As the weeks passed and they proceeded farther and farther south, Dick
grew restless and anxious. All sorts of vague fears began to torment
him, and he imagined that some disaster might have befallen Stephanie.
She might be ill. She might be needing him in a hundred ways, and
probably had been, throughout all those long months. The thought of
her in illness or trouble became as a spur to goad him on, and Peter
marvelled at the pace. Dick was still Dick, and his penitence was
always deep in proportion to its tardiness.

So the year went on. The wild asters showed their buds, and presently
opened into golden-hearted stars, filling the forest glades with a mist
of delicate purple. Farther and farther south they went, while the
wild sunflowers bloomed and faded, and the fair green growth became
lifeless and sere with the sinking of the sap. And every day's journey
brought Dick so many miles nearer to Stephanie.

Until at last, almost at the end of the autumn, they camped for the
night only a few miles away from the Collinson homestead. That same
night, as they sat beside their little fire, Peter Many-Names glanced
at Dick curiously. "You go on alone to-morrow," he said, as one
stating a long-decided fact.

Dick looked up, almost startled that the Indian should show so perfect
a knowledge of his feelings. "Yes, I go on alone," he answered
quietly, "I go on alone--to see my sister."

The Indian leant forward, his eyes shining greenly in the flicker of
the firelight. "Yes, you go on alone, my brother," he replied in his
own speech, "you go on alone,