nd him anywhere. The former was all but lost to me already. Of
the latter I did not care to think.

"And before I go, I want to tell you something I know of O'mie," Le
Claire went on.

I had wondered often at the strange sort of understanding I knew existed
between himself and O'mie. I began to listen more intently now, and for
the first time since leaving the Hermit's Cave I thought of the knife
with the script lettering. I shrank from questioning him or showing him
the thing. I had something of my father's patience in letting events
tell me what I wanted to know. So I asked no questions, but let him
speak.

"O'mie comes by natural right into a dislike, even hatred, of the red
race. It may be I know something more of him than anyone else in
Springvale knows. His story is a romance and a tragedy, stranger than
fiction. In the years to come, when hate shall give place to love in our
nation, when the world is won to the church, a younger generation will
find it hard to picture the life their forefathers lived."

The priest's brow darkened and his lips were compressed, as if he found
it hard to speak what he would say.

"I come to you, Philip, because your experience here has made you a man
who were only a boy yesterday; because you love O'mie; because you have
been able to keep a quiet tongue; and most of all, because you are John
Baronet's son, and heir, I believe, to his wisdom. Most of O'mie's story
is known to your father. He found it out just before he went to the war.
It is a tragical one. The boy was stolen by a band of Indians when he
was hardly more than a baby. It was a common trick of the savages then;
it may be again as our frontier creeps westward."

The priest paused and looked steadily out over the Neosho Valley,
darkening in the twilight.

"You know how you felt when O'mie was lost. Can you imagine what his
mother felt when she found her boy was stolen? Her husband was away on a
trapping tour, had been away for a long time, and she was alone. In a
very frenzy, she started out on the prairie to follow the Indians. She
suffered terrible hardship, but Providence brought her at last to the
Osage Mission, whose doors are always open to the distressed. And here
she found a refuge. A strange thing happened then. While Patrick
O'Meara, O'mie's father, was far from home, word had reached him that
his wife was dead. Coming down the Arkansas River, O'Meara chanced to
fall in with some Mexicans who had a battl