mbitious mamma, who persisted in keeping him at
a safe distance.

Max Lyster, with his handsome face and unsettled prospects, was not the
brilliant match her hopes aspired to. Pretty Margaret Haydon had, in all
obedience, refused him dances and affected not to see his efforts to be
near her. But he knew she did see; and one little bit of comfort he had
taken West with him was the fancy that her refusals were never voluntary
affairs, and that she had looked at him as he had never known her to look
at another man.

Well, that was a year ago, and he had just asked another girl to marry
him--a girl who did not look at him at all, but whose eyes were on the
swift-flowing current--troubled eyes, that made him long to take care of
her.

"Won't you speak to me at all?" he asked. "I will do anything to help you,
'Tana--anything at all."

She nodded her head slowly.

"Yes--now," she answered. "So would Mr. Haydon, Max."

"'Tana! do you mean--" His face flushed hotly, and he looked at her for
the first time with anger in his face.

She put out her hand in a tired, pleading way.

"I only mean that now, when I have been lucky enough to help myself, it
seems as if every one thinks I need looking after so much more than they
used to. Maybe because I am not strong yet--maybe so; I don't know." Then
she smiled and looked at him curiously.

"But I made a mistake when I said 'every one,' didn't I? For Dan never
comes near me any more."

Then the strange canoes came in sight and very close to them, as they
turned a bend in the creek. There were three large boats--one carrying
freight, one filled with new men for the works, and in the other--the
foremost one--was Mr. Haydon, and a tall, thin, middle-aged stranger.

"Uncle Seldon!" exclaimed Lyster, with animation, and held the canoe still
in the water, that the other might come close, and in a whisper he said:

"The one to the right is Mr. Haydon."

He glanced at her and saw she was making a painful effort at
self-control.

"Don't worry," he whispered. "We will just speak, and drift on past
them."

But when they called greeting to each other, and the Indian boatman was
told to send their craft close to the little camp canoe, she raised her
head and looked very levelly across the stranger, who had hair so like her
own, and spoke to the Indian who paddled their boat as though he were the
only one there to notice.

"Plucky!" decided Mr. Haydon, "and stubborn;" but he kept