e was, why did he not bring another? Were they all
done--should he never hear from her again?

CHAPTER IX

THE SUMMONS

The winter was wearing away. The wild fowl were passing northward,
landward. The game had changed its haunts. March was coming, the month
between the seasons for the tribes, the time of want, the leanest
period of the year.

Meriwether Lewis, alone one morning in the comfortable cabin which
served as a house for himself and his friend, sat pondering on these
things, as was his wont. His little Indian dog, always his steady
companion, had taken its place on the top of the flatted stump which
served as a desk, near the maps and papers which Lewis had pushed
away. Here the small creature sat, motionless, mute, its eyes fixed
adoringly upon its master.

The captain did not notice it. He did not at first hear the rap on the
door, nor the footfall of the man who entered inquiringly.

"Yes, Sergeant Ordway?" said he presently, looking up.

Ordway saluted.

"Something for you, sir. It seems to be a letter."

"A letter! How could that be?"

"That is the puzzle, sir," said Ordway, extending a folded and sealed
bit of paper. "We do not know how it came. Charbonneau's wife, the
Indian woman, found it in the baby's hammock just now. She brought it
to me, and I saw it was addressed to you. It must have been overlooked
by you some time."

"Possibly--possibly," said Lewis. His face was growing pale. "That is
all, I think, Sergeant," he added.

Now alone, he turned toward the letter, which lay upon the table. His
face lighted with a wondrous smile, though none might see it save the
little dog which watched his every movement. For Meriwether Lewis had
received once more the thing for which every fiber of his being
clamored!

He knew, without one look, that the number scratched in the wax of the
seal would be the figure "4." He opened the letter slowly. There fell
from it a square of stiff, white paper--all white, he thought, until
he turned it over. Then he saw it looking up at him--her face indeed!

It was a little silhouette in black, done in that day before the
camera, when small portraits were otherwise well-nigh impossible. The
artist, skilled as were many in this curious form of portraiture, had
done his work well. Lewis gazed with a sudden leap of his pulses upon
the features outlined before him--the profile so cleanly cut and
lofty--the hair low over the forehead, the chin round and fi