, defiantly, "I'm going to!"

"Go!" Nathaniel was losing control. "Go--you!"

Then, as if waking from sleep, the girl turned, and with no backward
look, went her way, Nathaniel following.

Travers, exhausted from the excitement, stretched himself once more upon
the mossy spot from which Priscilla had roused him. He was sensitive to
every impression and quivering in every nerve.

What he had witnessed turned him ill with loathing and contempt.
Brutality in any form was horrible to him, and the thought of the pretty,
spiritual child under the control of the coarse, stern man was almost
more than he could bear. Then memory added fuel to the present. It was
that man who had conjured up some kind of opposition to his mother--had
made living problems harder for her until she had won the confidence of
others. The man must be, Travers concluded, a fanatic and an ignoramus,
and to think of him holding power over that sprite of the woods!

He could not quite see how he might help the girl, but, lying there, her
dancing image flitting before his pitying eyes, he meant to outwit the
rough father in some way, and bring into the child's life a bit of
brightness. Then he smiled and his easy good nature returned.

"I'll get her to dance for me, never fear! I'll teach her to love music,
and I'll tell her stories. I must get her to explain about the lure of
the States. What on earth could the little beggar have meant? It sounded
as if she thought America had some sinister clutch on the Dominion. And
those infernal-sounding words!"

Travers shook with laughter. "That '_dosh_' was about the most
blasphemous thing I ever listened to. In a short space of time that child
managed to cram in more new ideas, words, and acts than any one I've ever
met before. I shouldn't wonder if she proves a character."

CHAPTER III

The day of warmth and song and dance changed to a cool evening. There was
a glowing sunset which faded into a clear, starry night.

Dick Travers, encased in a heavy sweater, lingered, after the light
failed, on the broad piazza facing the still purpled sky, and looked out
toward the Georgian Bay, which was hidden from sight by the ridge of hill
through which the Fox and Secret Portages cut. The mood of the afternoon
had fallen, as had the day, into calmness and restfulness. The fiddle,
which was never far from Travers, lay now beside him on the deep porch
swing, and every few moments he took it up and began an air