dying and strengthening Jim's will, in developing him from his
Southern indolence into Northern industry and sense of responsibility,
John Appleton's warnings had rung in Sally's ears, and Freddy Hartzman's
forceful and high-minded personality had passed before her eyes with an
appeal powerful and stimulating; but always she came to the same upland of
serene faith and white-hearted resolve; and Jim became dearer and dearer.

The baby had done much to brace her faith in the future and comfort her
anxious present. The child had intelligence of a rare order. She would lie
by the half-hour on the floor, turning over the leaves of a book without
pictures, and, before she could speak, would read from the pages in a
language all her own. She made a fairy world for herself, peopled by
characters to whom she gave names, to whom she assigned curious attributes
and qualities. They were as real to her as though flesh and blood, and she
was never lonely, and never cried; and she had buried herself in her
father's heart. She had drawn to her the roughest men in the troop, and
for old Sewell, the grim sergeant, she had a specially warm place.

"You can love me if you like," she had said to him at the very start, with
the egotism of childhood; but made haste to add, "because I love you,
Gri-Gri." She called him Gri-Gri from the first, but they knew only long
afterward that "gri-gri" meant "gray-gray," to signify that she called him
after his grizzled hairs.

What she had been in the life-history of Sally and Jim they both knew. Jim
regarded her with an almost superstitious feeling. Sally was his strength,
his support, his inspiration, his bulwark of defence; Nancy was the charm
he wore about his neck--his mascot, he called her. Once, when she was ill,
he had suffered as he had never done before in his life. He could not
sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one in a dream. When his
struggles against his enemy were fiercest, he kept saying over her name to
himself, as though she could help him. Yet always it was Sally's hand he
held in the darkest hours, in his brutal moments; for in this fight
between appetite and will there are moments when only the animal seems to
exist, and the soul disappears in the glare and gloom of the primal
emotions. Nancy he called his "lucky sixpence," but he called Sally his
"guinea-girl."

From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him. In his worst
hours, some innate optimism and humor h