wiping his
forehead on his sleeve. He was able to detect the deference that
Blackbird paid him by this visit. He sat on his bench in the Kitchen,
a sunny idol in a shrine, indifferent to the effect his background gave
him.

His mouth puckered. He put up his leather stained hand coyly, and
motioned her unmoving figure back.

"Ah, go 'way! Wasn't it to escape you and the likes of you that I made
me retrate to the shore? Nayther white, full haythen, half, nor quarther
nade apply. To come makin' the big eyes at me, and the post swarmin' wid
thim that do be ready to marry on any woman at the droppin' of the hat!"

Mobile blue water with ripple and wash made a background for the Indian
girl's dense repose. She could by lifting her eyes see the pock-marked
front of Owen's Kitchen, and gnarled roots like exposed ribs in the
shaggy heights above. But she kept her eyes lowered; and Owen stuck his
feet under his bench, sensitive to defects in his foot-wear, which an
artist skilled in making and mending moccasins could detect.

Blackbird moved forward and laid a shining dot on the stone he used as
his table; then, without a word, she turned and disappeared the way she
came, over the moss of the spring rivulet.

Owen left his bench and craned after her. He did not hear a pebble roll
on the stony beach or a twig snap among foliage.

"Begorra, it's the wings of a say-gull!" said Owen, and he took up her
offering. It was a tiny gold coin. Mackinac was full of gold the month
the Indians were paid. It came in kegs from Washington, under the escort
of soldiers, to the United States Agency, and was weighed out to each
red heir despoiled of land by white conquest, in his due proportion,
and immediately grasped from the improvident by merchants, for a little
pork, a little whiskey, a little calico. But this was an old coin with
a hole in it; a jewel worn suspended from neck or ear; the precious
trinket of a girl. On one side was rudely scratched the outline of a
bird.

"Begorra!" said Owen. He hid it in one of the rock pockets, a trust in a
savings-bank, and sat down again to work, trying to discover Blackbird's
object in offering tribute to him.

About sunset he lighted a fire in his low grate to cook his supper, and
put the finished boots in a remote corner of the cave until he
should get his pay. As he expected, Leon Baudette appeared, picking a
barefooted way along the beach, with many complimentary greetings. The
wary cobbler