. I've always thought Indians were nice."

It was clear that this father and daughter were on the best of terms,
and that admiration was of the essence of their relationship. Phil
stooped, picked up a pebble and flung it with the unconscious grace of a
boy far down the creek. Her Aunt Fanny's solicitude for her complexion
was or was not warranted; it depended on one's standard in such matters.
Phil was apparently not alarmed about the state of her complexion.

"Suppose we wait for the moon," Kirkwood suggested. "It will be with us
in an hour, and we can loaf along and still reach town by eleven. Only a
little while ago we had to get you to bed by eight, and it used to
bother me a lot about your duds; but we've outgrown that trouble. I
guess--"

He paused abruptly and began to whistle softly to himself. Phil was
familiar with this trick of her father's. She knew the processes of his
mind and the range of his memories well enough to supply the conclusion
of such sentences as the one that had resolved itself into a doleful
whistle. As he was an excellent amateur musician, the lugubrious tone of
his whistling was the subject of many jokes between them.

The walls of a miniature canon rose on either side of the creek, and the
light of the wind-blown camp-fire flitted across the face of the
shelving rock, or scampered up to the edge of the overhanging cliff,
where it flashed fitfully against the sky. The creek splashed and foamed
through its rough, boulder-filled channel, knowing that soon it would be
free of the dark defile and moving with dignity between shores of corn
toward the Wabash. The cliffs that enclosed Turkey Run represented some
wild whim of the giant ice plow as it had redivided and marked this
quarter of the world. The two tents in which the Kirkwoods had lodged
for a month had been pitched in a grassy cleft of the more accessible
shore, but these and other paraphernalia of the camp were now packed for
transportation in a one-horse wagon. As a fiercer assault of the wind
shook the vale, the horse whinnied and pawed impatiently.

"Cheer up, Billo! We're going soon!" called Phil.

Kirkwood stood by the fire, staring silently into the flames. Phil,
having reassured Billo, drew a little away from her father. In earlier
times when moods of abstraction fell upon him, she had sought to rouse
him; but latterly she had learned the wisdom and kindness of silence.
She knew that this annual autumnal gypsying held for