There was something startling in her voice. I knew it was the first drop of a coming flood, and I fortified myself. She went on repeating,-- "Mrs. Monten! I've been thinking, for a great long while, that it isn't right for you to go on living with that man, without knowing what he is. And I for one have got up to the point of coming right over here and telling you of it to once." I could not help the involuntary question of-- "Is my husband an evil man?" "Evil! I should think he might be, when he has got"---- "Stay, Mrs. Carter!" I interrupted. "I will hear no news of my husband that he does not choose to give me. Only one question,--Do you know of any action that my husband has done that is wrong or wicked?" Aunt Carter forgot her blue eyes and her bluer yarn, for she stopped her knitting, and her eyes changed to gray in my sight, as she ejaculated,-- "He's got Indian blood in him! I should think you'd be afraid he'd scalp you, if you didn't do just as he told you to. Everybody in Skylight is just as sorry for you as ever they can be." Aunt Carter paused. An open door announced my husband's unexpected presence. Aunt Carter rolled up her twenty-fourth twin of a stocking, and, hastily declaring that "she'd always noticed that 't was better to visit people when they was alone," she made all possible effort to escape before Saul came in. My husband an Indian! I looked at him anew. He wore the same presence that he did when first I saw him, a twelve-month before. There was no outward trace of the savage, as he came to welcome me; and I forgot my thought presently, as I listened to his words. "I am tired of this life," he said; "let us go." "Where, Saul?" "Anywhere, where we can breathe. I feel pent up here. I long to hunt something wild and free as I would be. Shall it be to the prairies, Lucy?" "Will you live on the hunt?" I asked. "I had not thought of that. No; I'll build you a"----And he paused. I laughed, and added,-- "Let us have it, Saul. A wigwam?" "Why not?" "Why not, indeed, Saul? I am content,--let us go." On the morrow I began the work of preparation. I was sitting upon the carpet, where I had cast all our treasures of knowledge, in the various guises of the printer's and binder's art, and was selecting the books that I fondly thought would be essential to my existence, when Saul came in. He looked down upon me with that look that always drinks up my sight into his, and said,-- "You are sorry to go, Lucy. I will stay." "No, Saul, I wish to go. You shall teach me the pleasures of wild life; and who knows but I shall like it so well that we will give up civilization for it? Where shall I pack all these books?" "Leave them all," he said. "We will close the house as it is, until we come back." And I left them all at home.