her friend. "It will be glorious on the
river, and all the 'young folks' will be out, I suppose."

"Did not Rumway ask you to go? Don't let me keep you at home, ef he
did."

"No; I am not counted among young folks any longer," returned she, with
a little sigh, that might mean something or nothing. Then a silence fell
between them for several minutes. It was the fashion of these friends to
wait for the spirit to move them to converse, and not unfrequently a
silence longer than that which was in heaven came between their
sentences; but to-night there was thunder in their spiritual atmosphere,
and the stillness was oppressive. Mrs. Smiley beat a tattoo with her
slipper.

"Rumway asked you to marry him, did he?" began Chillis, at last, in a
low and measured tone.

"Yes."

"An' you accepted him?"

"Not yet"--in a quavering adagio.

"But you will?"

"Perhaps so. I do not know"--in a firmer voice.

"Rumway is doin' well, an' he is a pretty good fellow, as men go. But he
is not half the man that I was at his age--or, rather, that I might have
been, ef I had had sech a motive for bein' a man as he has."

"It is not difficult to believe that, Mr. Chillis. There is heroic
material in you, and, I fear, none in Mr. Rumway." She spoke naturally
and cheerfully now, as if she had no sentiment too sacred to be revealed
about the person in question. "But why was there no motive?"

"Why? It was my fate; there was none--that's all. I had gone off to the
mountains when a lad, an' couldn't git back--couldn't even git letters
from home. The fur companies didn't allow o' correspondence--it made
their men homesick. When I came to be a man, I did as the other men did,
took an Indian wife, an' became the father o' half-breed children. I
never expected to live any other way than jest as we lived then--roamin'
about the mountains, exposed to dangers continually, an' reckless
because it was no use to think. But, after I had been a savage for a
dozen years--long enough to ruin any man--the fur companies began to
break up. The beaver were all hunted out o' the mountains. The men were
ashamed to go home--Indians as we all were--an' so drifted off down
here, where it was possible to git somethin' to eat, an' where there was
quite a settlement o' retired trappers, missionaries, deserted sailors,
and such-like Whites."

"You brought your families with you?"

"Of course. We could not leave them in the mountains, with the children,
to sta