to jump a
precipice and break your neck. I know now what the fight means. It
isn't just the Valley. It's the Nation. I hadn't any right to let my
(here a word was crossed and blotted) feeling shove you over. Yet if
you jump yourself, I'll not pull a gossamer thread to draw back. I
haven't any right.

You know how it has always been with me--whisked away to the convent at
Quebec when I was four, sent to that New York finishing school to get
what Father called 'world-sense knocked into my religion.' Well, they
were knocks all right. Then England and Switzerland and my Father's
orders to come back, and how lonely and apart he always seems. I don't
understand. What did Moyese mean to-night when he spoke of
'bow-and-arrow aristocracy'? Will you believe me that is the first I
have ever heard of it? Who is Calamity? Will you tell me if you know?
Why are we so apart from all the people of the Valley? What is a
'squaw man'? When I think, I am afraid for having let you become so
interwoven. I did not mean to. It is wholly my fault. The thoughts I
hardly knew myself must have been weaving up into this. They often do.
Father and Mr. Williams leave at daybreak for the Upper Pass. I did
not mean to write so much, but our old Mountain has come from under a
cloud. Anyway, I had to explain, no, I mean write. Explanations never
do explain; but here's the picture of 'The Warrior.'

"E. MacD."

Going to the French window of her bedroom, Eleanor called down to old
Calamity's room below. To her surprise, the half-breed woman on the
instant poked her head above the balcony railing of the basement
quarters.

"Going to the Ridge to-morrow, Calamity?"

"Oui, Mademoiselle, surement," pattered Calamity softly in that Cree
patois which is neither French nor Indian.

"Then, take this up to Mr. Wayland, please!"

As she withdrew to her room, Eleanor became conscious that she could
not remember a day since she had come back to the Valley when the Cree
half-breed had not been within call or sight. The girl suddenly
pressed both hands to her eyes. What had Moyese meant?

Once among the pillows, she fell into the life-bathing sleep of the
great mountain ozone-world. Was it a dream; or had Calamity come
stealing through the French window to stand at the foot of her bed?
Waking to a burst of sunlight across her face, Eleanor could not tell
in the least whether the memory of the half-breed woman standing in the
shado