When he had picketed his horse he went in and had her brought to him,--a fresh little flower-like woman-child, with hair and eyes that told of her mother, with reminders of her mother's ways as she stood before him, a waiting poise of the head, a lift of the chin.

They looked at each other in the candle-light, the child standing by the woman who had brought her, looking up at him curiously, and he not daring to touch her or go nearer.

She became uneasy and frightened at last, under his scrutiny, and when the woman would have held her from running away, began to cry, so that he gave the word to let her go.

She ran quickly into the other room of the cabin, from which she called back with tears of indignation in her voice, "You're not my papa--not my _real_ papa!" When the people were asleep, he sat before the blaze in the big fireplace, on the hearth cleanly swept with its turkey-wing and buffalo-tail.

There was to be one more night of his reprieve from solitude.