"I will not stay here," said the Indian mother with sullen stubbornness.
"I will go back beyond the Warais. My life is my own life, and I will do
what I like with it."
The girl started, but became composed again on the instant. "Is your
life all your own, mother?" she asked. "I did not come into the world
of my own will. If I had I would have come all white or all Indian. I
am your daughter, and I am here, good or bad--is your life all your own?"
"You can marry and stay here, when I go. You are twenty. I had my man,
your father, when I was seventeen. You can marry. There are men. You
have money. They will marry you--and forget the rest."
With a cry of rage and misery the girl sprang to her feet and started
forwards, but stopped suddenly at sound of a hasty knocking and a voice
asking admittance. An instant later, a huge, bearded, broad-shouldered
man stepped inside, shaking himself free of the snow, laughing half-
sheepishly as he did so, and laying his fur-cap and gloves with
exaggerated care on the wide window-sill.
"John Alloway," said the Indian woman in a voice of welcome, and with a
brightening eye, for it would seem as though he came in answer to her
words of a few moments before.
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