Joseph, who had been awaiting the arrival of his wife and the Captain for a couple of days, was displeased because his Wahnetta had not been within call from the moment of his advent, as long habit had led him to expect. That she met him now with the air of a friend and an equal, and after a pleasant greeting on her part discreetly left the brothers to themselves while she went in quest of her babies, was a display of good breeding and motherly solicitude which Joseph Ranger would have commended in any woman not his wife. But his will had so long been her only law that her greeting, in connection with his embarrassment at meeting his brother, put him in a very unamiable frame of mind. “I concluded that you had gone back on your agreement, John,” he growled, after a painful silence. “Oh, did you? Since when have you made a new record for punctuality, Joe?” “Since the arrival of the last courier at the trading-post, who brought me your letter.” “What did you think of my proposition?” “I accepted it at once, or I would not have been here. Who is Wahnetta going out driving with, I wonder?” “I called the cab for a drive with the children a little before you came, sir,” said the nurse. “Oh!” “You ought to be very proud of your wife, Joe.” “I am beginning to be. Yet you never can tell what the Indian nature will attempt. She seems to be all right when she lives with white people, but she’d lapse at once into barbarism again if she got a chance. They all do it. It is in the blood.” “She doesn’t seems to want that sort of a chance, Joe.” “An Indian is like a wild coyote, John.” “But you have caught a tame one, Joe. She is above the average, even of white women. Give her the chance she craves. Stand by her like a gentleman. She is as thoroughly civilized as any of us.” “Did you see her at the trading-post last summer?” “No; but why do you ask?” “Because you would have beheld her in her native element. You may capture and tame a coyote, but when you turn him loose among his natural environments, you can’t distinguish him in a short time from the wildest wolf of the pack.” “That being the case, there is strong need for keeping your wife in her adopted home, among your own people.” John was thawing toward his brother at a rapid rate; and Joseph, the erring but encouraged and repenting brother, felt a pang of remorse as he arose to welcome his wife and children upon their return from their drive, resolving in his heart that he would never again allow himself to regret the vows he had taken upon himself in his early manhood. The paper was awaiting the Captain at his table the next morning, with the announcement that the sailing of the ocean steamer was to be delayed for a couple of days on account of an accident to her propeller.