"Don't you trust that mock-turtle Osage, Marjorie, don't." O'mie was
more deeply in earnest than we thought.

"But O'mie," Marjie urged, "Jean was just as earnest as you are now;
and you'd say so, too, Phil, if you had heard him."

She was right. The words I had heard from above the rock rang true.

"And if he really wants to do better, what have we all been told in the
Sunday-school? 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'"

I could have caught that minor chord of fear had I been more master of
myself at that moment.

"Have ye talked wid Father Le Claire?" asked O'mie. "Let's lave the
baste to him. Phil, whin does your padre and his Company start to subdue
the rebillious South?"

"Pretty soon, father says."

"My father is going too," Marjie said gently, "and Henry Anderson and
Cris Mead, and all the men."

"Oh, well, we'll take care of the widders an' orphans." O'mie spoke
carelessly, but he added, "It's grand whin such min go out to foight fur
a country. Uncle Cam wants to go if he's aqual to the tests; you know
he's too near-sighted to see a soldier. Why don't you go too, Phil?
You're big as your dad, an' not half so essential to Springvale. Just
lave it to sich social ornimints as me an' Marjie's 'good Injun.'"

Again Marjie shivered.

"I want to go, but father won't let me leave--Aunt Candace."

"An' he's right, as is customary wid him. You nade your aunt to take
care of you. He couldn't be stoppin' the battle to lace up your shoes
an' see that you'd washed your neck. Come, Mary, little girls must be
gettin' home." And he and Mary trotted down the slope toward the
twinkling lights of the Cambridge House.

Before I reached home, O'mie had overtaken me, saying:

"Come, Phil, let's rest here a minute."

We were just by the bushes that shut off my "Rockport," so we parted
them and sat down on the point of rock. The moon was rising, red in the
east, and the Neosho Valley below us was just catching its gleams on the
treetops, while each point of the jagged bluff stood out silvery white
above the dark shadows. A thousand crickets and katydids were chirping
in the grass. It was only on the town side that the bushes screened this
point. All the west prairie was in that tender gloom that would roll
back in shadowy waves before the rising moon.

"Phil," O'mie began, "don't be no bigger fool than nature cut you out
fur to be. Don't you trust that 'good Injun' of Marjie's, but kape one
eye on him comin' an