amid the
complexities and smirch and withering heats of the great world, and she
had returned, simple, and clean, and wholesome. And she was glad of
it, as she lay there, slipping back to the old days, when the universe
began and ended at the sky-line, and when she journeyed over the Pass
to behold the Abyss.

It was a primitive life, that of her childhood, with few conventions,
but such as there were, stern ones. And they might be epitomized, as
she had read somewhere in her later years, as "the faith of food and
blanket." This faith had her father kept, she thought, remembering
that his name sounded well on the lips of men. And this was the faith
she had learned,--the faith she had carried with her across the Abyss
and into the world, where men had wandered away from the old truths and
made themselves selfish dogmas and casuistries of the subtlest kinds;
the faith she had brought back with her, still fresh, and young, and
joyous. And it was all so simple, she had contended; why should not
their faith be as her faith--_the faith of food and blanket_? The
faith of trail and hunting camp? The faith with which strong clean men
faced the quick danger and sudden death by field and flood? Why not?
The faith of Jacob Welse? Of Matt McCarthy? Of the Indian boys she
had played with? Of the Indian girls she had led to Amazonian war? Of
the very wolf-dogs straining in the harnesses and running with her
across the snow? It was healthy, it was real, it was good, she
thought, and she was glad.

The rich notes of a robin saluted her from the birch wood, and opened
her ears to the day. A partridge boomed afar in the forest, and a
tree-squirrel launched unerringly into space above her head, and went
on, from limb to limb and tree to tree, scolding graciously the while.
From the hidden river rose the shouts of the toiling adventurers,
already parted from sleep and fighting their way towards the Pole.

Frona arose, shook back her hair, and took instinctively the old path
between the trees to the camp of Chief George and the Dyea tribesmen.
She came upon a boy, breech-clouted and bare, like a copper god. He
was gathering wood, and looked at her keenly over his bronze shoulder.
She bade him good-morning, blithely, in the Dyea tongue; but he shook
his head, and laughed insultingly, and paused in his work to hurl
shameful words after her. She did not understand, for this was not the
old way, and when she passed a great an