e said, sitting down beside her, "Dick tells me you can read."

"Yis, me can read littil. But me only got one book." She sighed
slightly as she said this.

"Would you like to have another book?"

"Oh yis, very very much. Have you got one?"

"Ay, one; the only one I have in the world, Mary; an' you're the only
person in the world I'd give it to. But I'll give it to you, 'cause
you've no chance of gettin' one like it here. It's a Bible--the one my
mother gave me when I left home."

March pulled the little volume out of the breast of his coat as he
spoke, and handed it to the girl, who received it eagerly, and looked at
it with mingled feelings of awe and curiosity for some time before she
ventured to open it.

"The Bibil. Dick have oftin speak to me 'bout it, an' try to 'member
some of it. But he no can 'member much. He tell me it speak about the
great good Spirit. Injins call him Manitow."

"So it does, Mary. I'll leave it with you when I go away. You say Dick
couldn't remember much of it; neither can I, Mary. More shame to me,
for many an' many a time has my poor mother tried to make me learn it
off by heart."

"You mother?" repeated Mary earnestly. "Is you mother livin'?"

"That is she. At least, I left her well an' hearty in Pine Point
settlement not many weeks agone."

"Me wish me had mother," said Mary with a sigh.

March gazed at the sad face of his fair companion with a perplexed yet
sympathetic look. This was a new idea to him. Never having been
without a mother, it had never entered into his head to think of such a
thing as wishing for one.

"What you mother called?" said the girl, looking up quickly.

"Her name is Mary."

"Yis! that very strange. Call same as me."

"Not very strange, after all. There are a good number of Marys in the
world," replied March with a laugh. "See, here is her name on the
flyleaf of the Bible, written with her own hand, too: `To my dear March,
from his loving mother, Mary Marston, Pine Point settlement.' Isn't it
a good round hand o' write?"

"Very pritty," replied Mary. But she had now begun to spell out the
words of the book which had at last fallen into her hands, and March
could not again draw her into general talk; so he was fain to sit down
and help her to read the Bible.

Leaving them thus occupied, we will now return to the trappers, three of
whom, it will be remembered--Bounce, Redhand, and Gibault--had reached
the Mountain Fort and