“It’s only Betty,” remarked John with brotherly indifference, but still running to help his sister close the door against the playful south wind which insisted upon coming in along with his playmate, who laughed aloud as she closed the door in his face, set her back against it, and pulled off her hood to rearrange the soft red hair blown all over her face. Glancing toward her, the mother smiled with involuntary delight in her child’s beauty; and truly Betty was very pretty, very pretty indeed, having selected her features and coloring from her father’s pure Saxon type and her mother’s Latin traits, with rare eclecticism; for her deep and rich red hair was far more beautiful than John’s blond locks or Priscilla’s dusky tresses, and her eyes, halting between his blue orbs and her dark ones, had resulted in that sparkling brown we all love to watch in the woodland brook stealing out from the roots of trees. Her complexion, neither pale nor dark, was at once glowing and delicate, the white values bordering upon cream rather than snow, and the reds suggesting carnations rather than roses. As for the mouth, it was too young yet to have got its expression, but the lines were noble and clear, sweet and pure, promising much for their maturity. A winsome little lassie, and so her mother knew, but was far too wise to show it. In fact, her tone was almost reproving as she said,-- “Why, Betty! How you are blown about! You are growing too big a girl to play the hoiden.” “Goody Billington calls me a tear-coat,” replied the child, laughing in a blithe, fearless voice very pleasant to hear. “Goody Billington”--began the mother, flushing a little, but checking herself as she sat Sally up and pulled her little red flannel nightgown over her head, while she asked in quite another tone, “Did you see father, Betty?” “Yes’m, and he sent me to tell you he’d not be home for a little while. Oh, mother, what do you think! I was running out north to find father, as you bade me, and just as he stepped out of the woods with his axe and Rover, we saw two Indians coming down the trail, and they were driving a man, a white man, in front of them; and he looked so tired and so sick, and all bent over as if he would fall down, and no hat or cloak, and his doublet tattered and torn like the scarecrow we dressed for the cornfield, and his poor hands all cut and bleeding and tied behind him with a strip of deer-hide, and one of the Indians holding the end of it, and every once in a while jerking it to make the poor man go on; for indeed he looked fit to fall every minute, and, cold as it was, the sweat dropped off the dark points of his hair and rolled down his poor dirty face. Oh, mother, I was like to cry at such a sight, and father”-- “Ay, what did your father do?” asked Priscilla eagerly, as, lapping the child close to her breast, she turned half round toward Betty, who with fixed eyes seemed witnessing again the piteous sight she described.