slim little damsel of perhaps six years, her pink calico frock
starched until it stood out stiffly above her knees, and her topmost
curl tied up with a mammoth bow of green gauze ribbon, obviously culled
from some box of ancestral finery. She was a pretty child; but, even at
that tender age, the decision of her little mouth and chin was too
pronounced, the lift of her small head a trifle too self-satisfied.

"What's the matter, cry-baby?" she inquired, as Scott's interest in her
appearing was punctuated with a fresh gulp of woe.

"I've been spanked."

The critical light faded from her eyes, to be replaced by another
light, this time of interest.

"What for?"

"I was playing Indian in mother's jam."

Most damsels of that age would have asked for further particulars.
Instead,--

"Hh!" she sniffed, and the sniff spoke volumes as to the quality of her
young imagination.

Scott felt it lay upon him to defend himself from all which the sniff
implied.

"'Twas fun, too," he asserted suddenly, as, with a final wipe of his
fist across his eyes, he dismissed the outward traces of his grief.
"You get things to eat to take with you, and the bed's the camp, and
you live there for years and always, all alone. And then they smell the
things you're eating and--"

"Who's they?" the small girl demanded.

"Oh, wolves and Indians and things, and they come around and growl
awfully. But you aren't afraid. You take your gun, and crawl in under
the blankets and go on eating, sure they won't come in after you--"

"What do you eat?"

Had Scott been a few years older, he doubtless would have answered,--

"Pemmican."

As it was, however, he responded glibly,--

"Snake meat."

"Hh!" Again there came the sniff. "Snakes don't have meat. They only
wiggle."

Scott glared at her, during a moment of speechless hostility. Then
suddenly he fired upon her with what was to be the favourite weapon of
his later life.

"Prove it!" he ordered her defiantly.

But his defiance fell upon a surface quite impenetrable to its shaft.

"Sha'n't!"

"'Fraid cat!" he retorted curtly.

"Ain't!"

And then, for a short while, there was a silence. Out of the corner of
her eye, the little girl was watching Scott. Scott, his head
ostentatiously averted, was gazing at something he had dug up out of
his trouser pocket, something concealed within the curve of his smudgy
hand. Young as he was, his theories did not fail him. The silence
prolonged its