rom him grief at the loss of you?"
I asked myself with a sob in my heart.

"Forgive me, my beloved chief. When away from you I must die of a
coldness," I said to myself in a very low tone into the moonlight.

"Cold? Do you want the whole blanket, youngster? Snuggle into your
cradle closer," suddenly answered me my Gouverneur Faulkner as he
reached his long arm across the tree trunk to tuck in the blanket
about me and again he was immediately in the deep sleep from which my
spoken words had but partly awakened him. And then at his bidding I
did settle myself down into the fragrant boughs and I wept myself also
into a deep sleep.

The round sun was high over that Old Harpeth hill when I opened my
eyes. For a moment I did not see clearly and then I looked straight
into the deep eyes of my Gouverneur Faulkner. which for that first
time I had been able to see to be the color of violets in the
twilight. He was seated beside me smoking the fragrant pipe and
looking down at me with a great wonderment that was mingled with as
great a tenderness.

"Boy," he asked softly, "are you sure God has got that pattern of you
put away carefully in France?"

Before I could make answer to him a picture flashed into my mind. When
still a child one morning I opened my eyes to find my loved father
bending over me and in the hollow of his arm he held my mother in her
breakfast gown of lace and ribbons. He spoke:

"Some day, Celeste, a man will bend over her and watch her waken. God
grant it will be with the love--that produced that beauty. Look at
that love curl!"

And at the recall of that picture of me into my mind, my hands flew to
my face to find that same treacherous curl had descended to my cheek
from the mop above. With a fury of embarrassment I sprang to my feet
from under that blanket.

"I have a great hunger," I said as I observed a very crisp breakfast
to be prepared upon the coals of the fire. "I must have a fragment of
bacon upon the instant." And I bent over the fire to obtain what I had
demanded for a cover to my confusion.

"No, you don't, until you've washed that face and those hands that
still have the supper smudge on them, in the pool down there. I left
the soap and the dry sleeves and bosom of a flannel shirt for you.
Don't you pack towels in a kit in your country?" With which laughing
answer my Gouverneur Faulkner denied unto me an immediate breakfast.

"You thought him to admire the love curl, while he was rem