the end, it would still be a sacrifice in the present." He saw his own
miserable logic and affected didactics, but he went on lightly, "But
why do you ask such a question? You haven't any one in your mind for me,
have you?"

She had risen thoughtfully and was moving towards the door. Suddenly she
turned with a quick, odd vivacity: "Perhaps I had. Oh, Peter, there was
such a lovely little squaw I saw the last time I was at Oak Bottom! She
was no darker than I am, but so beautiful. Even in her little cotton
gown and blanket, with only a string of beads around her throat, she
was as pretty as any one here. And I dare say she could be educated and
appear as well as any white woman. I should so like to have you see her.
I would have tried to bring her to the fort, but the braves are very
jealous of their wives or daughters seeing white men, you know, and I
was afraid of the colonel."

She had spoken volubly and with a strange excitement, but even at the
moment her face changed again, and as she left the office, with a quick
laugh and parting gesture, there were tears in her eyes.

Accustomed to her moods and caprices, Peter thought little of the
intrusion, relieved as he was of his first fears. She had come to him
from loneliness and curiosity, and, perhaps, he thought with a sad
smile, from a little sisterly jealousy of the young girl who had evinced
such an interest in him, and had known him before. He took up his pen
and continued the interrupted paragraph of his report.

"I am satisfied that much of the mischievous and extravagant prejudice
against the half breed and all alliances of the white and red
races springs from the ignorance of the frontiersman and his hasty