mustache, the corners of his eyes wrinkling
with pleasure.

The sight was good to him, for the girl approaching down the trail was
like some wood sprite, light-footed, slender, and dark, with twin
braids of hair to her waist framing an oval face colored by the wind
and sun. She was very beautiful, and a great fever surged up through
the old man's veins, till he gripped the boards at his side and bit
sharply at the pipe between his teeth.

"The salmon-berries are ripe," she announced, "and the hills back of
the village are pink with them. I took Constantine's squaw with me, and
we picked quarts and quarts. I ate them all!"

Her laughter was like the tinkle of silver bells. Her head, thrown back
as she laughed gayly, displayed a throat rounded and full and smooth,
and tanned to the hue of her wind-beaten cheeks. Every move of her
graceful body was unrestrained and flowing, with a hint of Indian
freedom about it. Beaded and trimmed like a native princess, her
garments manifested an ornature that spoke of savagery, yet they were
neatly cut and held to the pattern of the whites.

"Constantine was drunk again last night, and I had to give him a
talking to when we came back. Oh, but I laid him out! He's frightened
to death of me when I'm angry."

She furrowed her brow in a scowl--the daintiest, most ridiculous pucker
of a brow that ever man saw--and drew her red lips into an angry pout
as she recounted her temperance talk till the trader broke in, his
voice very soft, his gray-blue eyes as tender as those of a woman:

"It's good to have you home again, Necia. The old sun don't shine as
bright when you're away, and when it rains it seems like the moss and
the grass and the little trees was crying for you. I reckon everything
weeps when you're gone, girl, everything except your old dad, and
sometimes he feels like he'd have to bust out and join the rest of
them."

He seated himself upon the worn spruce-log steps, and the girl settled
beside him and snuggled against his knee.

"I missed you dreadfully, daddy," she said. "It seemed as if those days
at the Mission would never end. Father Barnum and the others were very
kind, and I studied hard, but there wasn't any fun in things without
you."

"I reckon you know as much as a priest, now, don't you?"

"Oh, lots more," she said, gravely. "You see, I am a woman."

He nodded reflectively. "So you are! I keep forgetting that."

Their faces were set towards the west, wher