ut up you. You go for mak fool of
yousef."

But Josie paid no attention to her husband and continued petting the
girl.

"Josie," cried Marion, fixing her eyes upon the Frenchwoman's kindly
face, "tell me, is my father badly hurt? Perault would not tell me the
truth."

"Non, ma petite, dat hur's not so ver' bad, but de cole water--das bad
ting for fader, sure."

The cloud of gloom on the girl's face deepened. She turned away toward
the door and saying, "I'll go and get some crocuses," she mounted her
pony and rode off toward the Jumping Rock.

Within half an hour the girl came galloping back.

"Josie," she cried excitedly, springing off her pony, "they're coming.
I saw them up the trail."

She tossed her flowers on the table and hurried to arrange them in
basins, cups, old tin cans, and all available vessels, till the whole
house seemed to be running over with those first and most exquisite
prairie spring-flowers. And for many following days the spring-flowers
filled the house with their own hope and cheer, when hope and cheer
were both sorely, needed.

IX

TIM CARROLL

There stood at the door Perault, Josie, and Marion, waiting for Shock
and the Old Prospector to drive up. The contrast between the two men in
the buckboard was striking. The one, a young man with muscular frame, a
strong, fresh face innocent of worldly wisdom and marked by the
frankness of an unspoiled faith in men and things; the other, an old
man, tall, slight, with a face worn and weary, delicately, featured and
kindly enough, but with a mask of inscrutable reserve tinged with that
distrust of men and things that comes of a bitter experience of the
world's falsities. For fifty years Walter Mowbray had looked out of the
piercing black eyes that gleamed like coals of fire through his pallid
face upon a world that had continuously allured and mocked him. The
piercing eyes were those of an enthusiast, not to say fanatic. The fire
in them still burned deep and bright. The indomitable spirit, refusing
to accept defeat, still lived and hoped with a persistence at once
extraordinary and pathetic.

A gleam of light shot across his pale impassive face as his eyes fell
upon his daughter who, in the presence of a stranger, shrank back
behind Josie. He beckoned her to him.

"Come, my daughter," he said in a clear, musical voice.

Then she forgot her shyness and threw herself at him.

"Oh, father!" she cried in a low, smothered voice, her