boy's love of that kind of
lying.

"Wouldn't a Injun look funny with my thcalp?" Bud Anderson put in. "I'll
bet I'm jutht a Injun mythelf."

"Then you've got some little baby girl's scalp," grinned Jim Conlow.

"'Tain't no 'pothum'th, anyhow," rejoined Bud; and we laughed our fears
away.

That evening Aunt Candace sent me home with Marjie to take some fresh
doughnuts to Mrs. Whately. I can see the little girl now as we splashed
sturdily down Cliff Street through the wet gloom, her face like a white
blossom in the shadowy twilight, her crimson jacket open at the throat,
and the soft little worsted scarf about her damp fluffy curls making a
glow of rich coloring in the dim light.

"You'll never let the Indians get you, will you, Phil?" she asked, when
we stood a moment by the bushes just at the steepest bend of the street.

I stood up proudly. I was growing very fast in this gracious climate.
"The finest-built boy in Springvale," the men called me. "No, Marjie.
The Indians won't get me, nor anybody else I don't want them to have."

She drew close to me, and I caught her hand in mine a moment. Then,
boylike, I flipped her heavy braid of hair over her shoulder and shook
the wettest bushes till their drops scattered in a shower about her.
Something, a dog we thought, suddenly slid out from the bush and down
the cliff-side. When I started home after delivering the cakes, Marjie
held the candle at the door to light my way. As I turned at the edge of
the candle's rays to wave my hand, I saw her framed in the doorway.
Would that some artist could paint that picture for me now!

"I'll whistle up by the bushes," I cried, and strode into the dark.

On the bend of the crest, where the street drops down almost too steep
for a team of horses to climb, I turned and saw Marjie's light in the
window, and the shadow of her head on the pane. I gave a long, low
whistle, the signal call we had for our own. It was not an echo, it was
too near and clear, the very same low call in the bushes just over the
cliff beside me as though some imitator were trying to catch the notes.
A few feet farther on my path I came face to face with the same Indian
whom I had seen an hour before. He strode by me in silence.

Without once looking back I said to myself, "If you aren't afraid of me,
I'm not afraid of you. But who gave that whistle, I wonder. That's my
call to Marjie."

"Marjie's awful 'fraid of Injuns," I said to Aunt Candace that night.