rned his fondness with glad-eyed interest, and they dropped
into huge comfortable chairs on either side the fireplace, in which the
back-log was falling to ruddy ruin.

"And this time next year?" He put the question seemingly to the
glowing log, and, as if in ominous foreshadow, it flared brightly and
crumbled away in a burst of sparks.

"It is marvellous," he went on, dismissing the future in an effort to
shake himself into a wholesomer frame of mind. "It has been one long
continuous miracle, the last few months, since you have been with me.
We have seen very little of each other, you know, since your childhood,
and when I think upon it soberly it is hard to realize that you are
really mine, sprung from me, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. As
the tangle-haired wild young creature of Dyea,--a healthy, little,
natural animal and nothing more,--it required no imagination to accept
you as one of the breed of Welse. But as Frona, the woman, as you were
to-night, as you are now as I look at you, as you have been since you
came down the Yukon, it is hard . . . I cannot realize . . . I . . ."
He faltered and threw up his hands helplessly. "I almost wish that I
had given you no education, that I had kept you with me, faring with
me, adventuring with me, achieving with me, and failing with me. I
would have known you, now, as we sit by the fire. As it is, I do not.
To that which I did know there has been added, somehow (what shall I
call it?), a subtlety; complexity,--favorite words of yours,--which is
beyond me.

"No." He waved the speech abruptly from her lips. She came over and
knelt at his feet, resting her head on his knee and clasping his hand
in firm sympathy. "No, that is not true. Those are not the words. I
cannot find them. I fail to say what I feel. Let me try again.
Underneath all you do carry the stamp of the breed. I knew I risked
the loss of that when I sent you away, but I had faith in the
persistence of the blood and I took the chance; doubted and feared when
you were gone; waited and prayed dumbly, and hoped oftentimes
hopelessly; and then the day dawned, the day of days! When they said
your boat was coming, death rose and walked on the one hand of me, and
on the other life everlasting. _Made or marred; made or marred_,--the
words rang through my brain till they maddened me. Would the Welse
remain the Welse? Would the blood persist? Would the young shoot rise
straight and tall and