she looked up and began with,--

"Mrs. Monten!"

There was something startling in her voice. I knew it was the first drop
of a coming flood, and I fortified myself. She went on repeating,--

"Mrs. Monten! I've been thinking, for a great long while, that it isn't
right for you to go on living with that man, without knowing what he is.
And I for one have got up to the point of coming right over here and
telling you of it to once."

I could not help the involuntary question of--

"Is my husband an evil man?"

"Evil! I should think he might be, when he has got"----

"Stay, Mrs. Carter!" I interrupted. "I will hear no news of my husband
that he does not choose to give me. Only one question,--Do you know of
any action that my husband has done that is wrong or wicked?"

Aunt Carter forgot her blue eyes and her bluer yarn, for she stopped her
knitting, and her eyes changed to gray in my sight, as she ejaculated,--

"He's got Indian blood in him! I should think you'd be afraid he'd scalp
you, if you didn't do just as he told you to. Everybody in Skylight is
just as sorry for you as ever they can be."

Aunt Carter paused. An open door announced my husband's unexpected
presence.

Aunt Carter rolled up her twenty-fourth twin of a stocking, and, hastily
declaring that "she'd always noticed that 't was better to visit people
when they was alone," she made all possible effort to escape before Saul
came in.

My husband an Indian! I looked at him anew. He wore the same presence
that he did when first I saw him, a twelve-month before. There was no
outward trace of the savage, as he came to welcome me; and I forgot my
thought presently, as I listened to his words.

"I am tired of this life," he said; "let us go."

"Where, Saul?"

"Anywhere, where we can breathe. I feel pent up here. I long to hunt
something wild and free as I would be. Shall it be to the prairies,
Lucy?"

"Will you live on the hunt?" I asked.

"I had not thought of that. No; I'll build you a"----And he paused.

I laughed, and added,--

"Let us have it, Saul. A wigwam?"

"Why not?"

"Why not, indeed, Saul? I am content,--let us go."

On the morrow I began the work of preparation. I was sitting upon the
carpet, where I had cast all our treasures of knowledge, in the various
guises of the printer's and binder's art, and was selecting the books
that I fondly thought would be essential to my existence, when Saul came
in.

He looked down upon me