backward like; but maybe this time--"

"Oh, you must cure him of that," laughed the girl. "He is a splendid
fellow, and I won't forgive you if you don't marry him before the summer
is over."

At that instant Overton opened the door.

"If you are ready now to see me--" he began, and she nodded her head and
went toward him, her face a little pale and visibly embarrassed.

Then she turned and went back.

"Come, Toddles," she said; "you come with 'Tana."

A faint flush was tingeing the east, and over the water-courses a silvery
mist was spread. She looked out from the window and then up the mountain.

"Let us go out--up on the bluff," she suggested. "I have been shut up in
houses so long! I want to feel that the trees are close to me again."

He assented in silence and the child, having appeased its hunger, was
disposed to be more gracious, and the little hands were reached to him
while she said:

"Up."

He lifted her to his shoulder, where she laughed down in high glee at the
girl who walked beside in silence. It was so much easier to plan, while
far away from him, what she would say, than to say it.

But he himself broke the silence.

"You call her Toddles," he remarked. "It is not a pretty name for so
pretty a child. Has she no other one?"

They had reached the bluff above the camp that was almost a town now. She
sat down on a log and wished she could keep from trembling so.

"Yes--she has another one--a pretty one, I think," she said, at last. "It
is Gracie--Grace--"

She looked up at him appealingly.

But the emotion in her face made his lips tighten. He had heard so many
revelations of her that morning. What was this last to be?

"Well," he said, coldly, "that is a pretty name, so far as it goes; but
what is the rest of it?"

"Overton," she said, in a low voice, and his face flushed scarlet.

"What do you mean?" he asked, harshly, and the little one, disliking his
tone, reached her arms to 'Tana. "Whose child is this?"

"Your child."

"It is not true."

"It is true," she answered, as decidedly as himself. "Her mother--the
woman you married--told me so when she was dying."

He stared at her incredulously.

"I wouldn't believe her even then," he answered. "But how does it come
that you--"

"You don't need to claim her, if you don't want to," she said, ignoring
all his astonishment. "Her mother gave her to me. She is mine, unless you
claim her. I don't care who her father was--or her mothe