"I am going to be your uncle, now," he said in a caressing tone. "You have kept up like a soldier under some terrible things here; but we will try to make things brighter for you now." She smiled in a dreary way without looking at him. His knowledge of the terrible things she had endured seemed to her very limited. "And you will go now with us--with Mr. Haydon--back to your mother's old home, won't you?" he said, in a persuasive way. "It is not good, you know, for a little girl not to know any of her relations, or to bear such shocking grudges," he added, in a lower tone. But she gave him no answering smile. "I will go to your house if you will have me," she said. "You and Max are my friends. I will go only with people I like." "You know, my dear," said Mr. Haydon, who heard her last words. "You know I offered you a home in my house until such time as you got to school, and--and of course, I'll stick to it." "Though you are a little afraid to risk it, aren't you?" she asked, with an unpleasant smile. "Haven't you an idea that I might murder you all in your beds some fine night? You know I belong to a country where they do such things for pastime. Aren't you afraid?" "That is a very horrible sort of pleasantry," he answered, and moved away from the dead face he had been staring at. "I beg you will not indulge in it, especially when you move in a society more refined than these mining camps can afford. It will be a disadvantage to you if you carry with you customs and memories of this unfinished section. And after all, you do not belong here, your family was of the East. When you go back there, it would be policy for you to forget that you had ever lived anywhere else." Mr. Haydon had never made so long a speech to her before, and it was delivered with a certain persistence, as if it was a matter of conscience he would be relieved to have off his mind. "I think you are mistaken when you say I do not belong here," she answered, coolly. "Some of my family have been a good many things I don't intend to be. I was born in Montana; and I might have starved to death for any help my 'family' would have given me, if I hadn't struck luck and helped myself here in Idaho. So I think I belong out here, and if I live, I will come back again--some day." She turned to Seldon and pointed to the dead form. "They will take him away to-day--I heard them say so," she said quietly. "Let it be somewhere away from the camp--not near--not where I can see." "Can't you forget--even now, 'Tana?" "Does anybody ever forget?" she asked. "When people say they can forget and forgive, I don't trust them, for I don't believe them." "Have you any idea who killed him?" he asked. "It is certainly a strange affair. I thought you might suspect some one these people know nothing of."