and small for her age. A flush always came to her cheeks when we talked
of Jondo in that way. We didn't know why.

We sat silent for a little while. A vague sense of desolateness, of the
turning-places of life, as real to children as to older folk, seemed to
press suddenly down upon all three of us. Ours was not the ordinary
child-life even of that day. And that was a time when children had no
world of their own as they have to-day. Whatever developed men and women
became a part of the younger life training as well. And while we were
ignorant of much that many children then learned early, for we had lived
mostly beside the fort on the edge of the wilderness, we were alert, and
self-dependent, fearless and far-seeing. We could use tools readily: we
could build fires and prepare game for cooking; we could climb trees,
set traps, swim in the creek, and ride horses. Moreover, we were bound
to one another by the force of isolation and need for playmates. Our
imagination supplied much that our surroundings denied us. So we felt
more deeply, maybe, than many city-bred children who would have paled
with fear at dangers that we only laughed over.

No ripple in the even tenor of our days, however, had given any hint of
the coming of this sudden tense oppression on our young souls, and we
were stunned by what we could neither express nor understand.

"Whatever comes or doesn't come," Beverly said at last, stretching
himself at full length, stomach downward, on the bare ground, "whatever
happens to us, we three will stand by each other always and always,
won't we, Mat?"

He lifted his face to the girl's. Oh, Beverly! I saw him again one day
down the years, stretched out on the ground like this, lifting again a