r in his primitive mind he
knew that, however wild a promise, life is so wild in its events, there
comes the hour for redemption of all I O U's.

Meanwhile, weeks, months, and even a couple of years passed, Macavoy
and Pierre coming and going, sometimes together, sometimes not, in all
manner of words at war, in all manner of fact at peace. And Ida, out of
the bounty of her nature, gave the two vagabonds a place at her fireside
whenever they chose to come. Perhaps, where speech was not given, a gift
of divination entered into her instead, and she valued what others found
useless, and held aloof from what others found good. She had powers
which had ever been the admiration of Guidon Hill. Birds and animals
were her friends--she called them her kinsmen. A peculiar sympathy
joined them; so that when, at last, she tamed a white wild duck, and
made it do the duties of a carrier-pigeon, no one thought it strange.

Up in the hills, beside the White Sun River, lived her sister and her
sister's children; and, by and by, the duck carried messages back and
forth, so that when, in the winter, Ida's health became delicate, she
had comfort in the solicitude and cheerfulness of her sister, and the
gaiety of the young birds of her nest, who sent Ida many a sprightly
message and tales of their good vagrancy in the hills. In these days
Pierre and Macavoy were little at the Post, save now and then to sit
with Hilton beside the fire, waiting for spring and telling tales. Upon
Hilton had settled that peaceful, abstracted expectancy which shows man
at his best, as he waits for the time when, through the half-lights of
his fatherhood, he shall see the broad fine dawn of motherhood spreading
up the world--which, all being said and done, is that place called Home.
Something gentle came over him while he grew stouter in body and in all
other ways made a larger figure among the people of the West.

As Pierre said, whose wisdom was more to be trusted than his general
morality, "It is strange that most men think not enough of themselves
till a woman shows them how. But it is the great wonder that the woman
does not despise him for it. Quel caractere! She has so often to show
him his way like a babe, and yet she says to him, Mon grand homme! my
master! my lord! Pshaw! I have often thought that women are half saints,
half fools, and men half fools, half rogues. But Quelle vie!--what life!
without a woman you are half a man; with one you are bound to