are the best people in the world. They won't hurt anybody who lets
them alone. That Indian you're talking against is the Black Partridge.
He is splendid. He is my very oldest friend, except Gaspar. He
wouldn't hurt a fly, and he'd help everybody needed help. It's this
horrible offer of money for every Indian caught that has set my
precious Other Mother wandering over the country this dark night, and
made Gaspar and me homeless runaways."

There was instant hubbub in the room, and no more desire for sleep on
anybody's part until Kitty had been made to tell her story, the story
of her life as she remembered it, over and over again; and when
finally slumber overtook her, even in the midst of her narrative, her
dreams were filled with visions of Wahneenah fleeing and forever
pursued by uniformed soldiers with glistening bayonets, who fired
after her to the merry sound of a bugle and drum.

In the morning she found Gaspar and related her night's experience.
He received it gravely, without the sympathy she expected.

"Kit, I don't understand. What you said was true, and right enough for
me to say. But it's not like you to be so bold. Yesterday, you were
saucy to the harvest-women and now again to these. Is it because you
are growing up so fast, I wonder? All women are not like Other Mother.
They might get angry with you, and punish you. If I should go----"

"If what, Gaspar Keith?"

"Kitty, _I can't stay here_. It would kill me. I must get out into the
open. I am going away. Right away. Now. This very hour even. You must
be brave, and understand."

"Go away? I, too? All right. Only don't look so sober. I don't care. I
promised to go anywhere you wished and I will. I'm ready."

"But--but--It's only I, my Kit. Not you."

"You would go away, and--leave me here? Just because you don't like
it?"

All the color went out of her fair, round face, and she caught his
head between her hands, and turned it so that she could look into his
dark eyes, which could not bear to look into her own startled and
reproachful ones.

CHAPTER XV.

PARTINGS AND MEETINGS.

Gaspar's courage returned, and he led her to a sheltered place under
the stockade, where he made her sit beside him for the brief time that
was his.

"Not all because I do not like it; but because I am almost a man and I
have found the chance of my life. There is one here, a _voyageur_,
with his boat. The finest vessel I ever saw, though they've not been
so m