g in Oklahoma or
Arizona will set the blood bounding through my veins and my first
thought is of her.

I shall never forget the day my self-appointed guardianship of her
began. Before we had a schoolhouse, Aunt Candace taught the children of
the community in our big living-room. One rainy afternoon, late in the
Fall, the darkness seemed to drop down suddenly. We could not see to
study, and we were playing boisterously about the benches of our
improvised schoolroom, Marjie, Mary Gentry, Lettie and Jim Conlow, Tell
Mapleson,--old Tell's boy,--O'mie, both the Mead boys, and the four
Anderson children. Suddenly Marjie, who was watching the rain beating
against the west window, called, "Phil, come here! What is that long,
narrow, red light down by the creek?"

Marjie had the softest voice. Amid the harsh jangle of the Andersons and
Bill Mead's big whooping shouts it always seemed like music to me. I
stared hard at the sullen block of flame in the evening shadows.

"I don't know what it is," I said.

She slipped her fingers into the pocket of my coat as I turned away, and
her eyes looked anxiously into mine. "Could it be an Indian camp-fire?"
she queried.

I looked again, flattening my nose against the window pane. "I don't
know, Marjie, but I'll find out. Maybe it's somebody's kitchen fire down
west. I'll ask O'mie."

In truth, that light had often troubled me. It did not look like the
twinkling candle-flare I could see in so many windows of the village. I
turned to O'mie, who, with his face to the wall, waited in a game of
hide-and-seek. Before I could call him Marjie gave a low cry of terror.
We all turned to her in an instant, and I saw outside a dark face close
against the window. It was gone so quickly that only O'mie and I caught
sight of it.

"What was it, Marjie?" the children cried.

"An Indian boy," gasped Marjie. "He was right against the window."

"I'll bet it was a spook," shouted Bill Mead.

"I'll bet it wasn't nothin' at all," grinned Jim Conlow. "Possum Conlow"
we called him for that secretive grin on his shallow face.

"I'll bet it wath a whole gang of Thiennes," lisped tow-headed Bud
Anderson.

"They ain't no Injuns nearer than the reserve down the river, and ain't
been no Injuns in Springvale for a long time, 'cept annuity days,"
declared Tell Mapleson.

"Well, let's foind out," shouted O'mie, "I ain't afraid av no Injun."

"Neither am I," I cried, starting after O'mie, who was out of the