_The Coming of the Woman-Child_ The next day he sent across the settlement for the child, waiting for her with mixed emotions,--a trembling merge of love and fear, with something, indeed, of awe for this woman-child of her mother, who had come to him so deviously and with a secret significance so mighty of portent to his own soul.

When they brought her in at last, he had to brace himself to meet her.
She came and stood before him, one foot a little advanced, several dolls clutched tightly under one arm, and her bonnet swinging in the other hand.

She looked up at him fearlessly, questioningly, but with no sign of friendliness.

He saw and felt her mother in all her being, in her eyes and hair, in the lines of her soft little face, and indefinably in her way of standing or moving.

He was seized with a sudden fear that the mother watched him secretly out of the child's eyes, and with the child's lips might call to him accusingly, with what wild cries of anguish and reproach he dared not guess.