and Oriental enough to puzzle any passing ethnologist. A lithe and
slender grace characterized her. Beyond a quickened lilt to the
imagination, the contribution of the Celt was in no wise apparent. It
might possibly have put the warm blood under her skin, which made her
face less swart and her body fairer; but that, in turn, might have come
from Shpack, the Big Fat, who inherited the colour of his Slavonic
father. And, finally, she had great, blazing black eyes--the half-caste
eye, round, full-orbed, and sensuous, which marks the collision of the
dark races with the light. Also, the white blood in her, combined with
her knowledge that it was in her, made her, in a way, ambitious.
Otherwise by upbringing and in outlook on life, she was wholly and
utterly a Toyaat Indian.

One winter, when she was a young woman, Neil Bonner came into her life.
But he came into her life, as he had come into the country, somewhat
reluctantly. In fact, it was very much against his will, coming into the
country. Between a father who clipped coupons and cultivated roses, and
a mother who loved the social round, Neil Bonner had gone rather wild. He
was not vicious, but a man with meat in his belly and without work in the
world has to expend his energy somehow, and Neil Bonner was such a man.
And he expended his energy in such a fashion and to such extent that when
the inevitable climax came, his father, Neil Bonner, senior, crawled out
of his roses in a panic and looked on his son with a wondering eye. Then
he hied himself away to a crony of kindred pursuits, with whom he was
wont to confer over coupons and roses, and between the two the destiny of
young Neil Bonner was made manifest. He must go away, on probation, to
live down his harmless follies in order that he might live up to their
own excellent standard.

This determined upon, and young Neil a little repentant and a great deal
ashamed, the rest was easy. The cronies were heavy stockholders in the
P. C. Company. The P. C. Company owned fleets of river-steamers and
ocean-going craft, and, in addition to farming the sea, exploited a
hundred thousand square miles or so of the land that, on the maps of
geographers, usually occupies the white spaces. So the P. C. Company
sent young Neil Bonner north, where the white spaces are, to do its work
and to learn to be good like his father. "Five years of simplicity,
close to the soil and far from temptation, will make a man of him," sa