nd
homesickness and fear, he heard the call of a human voice and his
name, the voice coming to him high above the wind, with its own note
of terrorized anguish.

His father's voice!

The voice sounded nearer and nearer, calling, calling!

The child ran toward the sound of it, the loneliness of the prairie
swallowed up in a sob of gladness, and he was in Seth's arms.

As for Seth, he could only articulate one word:

"Why? Why?"

Celia had deserted him, but the Boy!

"I was looking for my mother," sobbed the child in answer, safe in the
tender hollow of his arm.

After a moment's hesitation:

"Mother will come to you some day," Seth breathed over him. "Won't
Cyclona and father do till then?"

And in the close clasp of the longing man the child felt the
unmistakable throb of paternity penetrate his heart and was
satisfied.

CHAPTER XVI.

[Illustration]

The winter had been too long and cold, or the child, however tender
Seth's care of him, had been insufficiently clothed and fed.

He lay ill, alternately shaking with chills and burning with fever.

It was March now and the winds blew with the fierceness of tornadoes.

But the laughter of Charlie's delirium outvoiced the winds.

Now he moaned with them and sighed.

Cyclona took up her abode at the dugout now, nursing him tirelessly,
while Seth walked the floor, back and forth, back and forth like some
caged and helpless animal writhing in pain; for from the first he had
read death in the face of the child.

The wind lulled and Seth knelt by his bedside, his ear against
Charlie's heart, listening for his breathing, Cyclona standing
fearfully by, her face white as the coverings.

After a long time Seth raised beseeching eyes to her in an unspoken
question:

"Does he breathe?"

As if he had heard, Charlie suddenly opened his eyes and looked
smilingly first at one and then at the other of these two who had
encompassed his short life about with such loving care.

"Listen," he whispered, "to the wind."

The wind had risen. It howled like some mad thing. It blew great
blasts, ferocious blasts and deafening.

It was as if it, too, were hurt. It was as if it, too, suffered the
agony of mortal pain in sympathy with the child.

Soon the child began to lisp and they bent their heads to listen.

"I am ... going ... out ... in ... the wind ... again," he said, "to
find ... my ... mother."

"Charlie!" cried Seth, in a voice whose anguish soun