Old Trask, his short-sighted eyes blinking beneath his twitching, bushy red eyebrows, looked down as upon a miracle when a red-mittened hand caught his and he heard a confident voice--the clear voice children use to enlighten the stupidity of adults: "I'll help you across; take my hand." "Eh--what?" He leaned down, failing to recognize her. Children had no identity to him. They were merely brats, he used to say, unless they happened to have some musical aptitude. But he accepted her aid, his battered old hat rocking excitedly upon his high bony forehead, as he ducked and turned and shivered at the oncoming balls. "Bad boys--bad boys!" he ejaculated. "Boys are the devil!" "Yes," agreed Split, craftily. "Girls are best. Your little girl, now--father--" she began softly. "Eh--what?" he exclaimed. "Who's your father? My respects to him." "I have no father," she answered softly. A plan had sprung full-born from her quick brain. She would win this erratic father back to memory of his former life and her place in it--somewhat as did one Lucy Manette, a favorite heroine of Split's that Sissy had read about and told her of. That would be a fine thing to do--almost as fine, and requiring the center of the stage as much, as rehabilitating the Red Man. "I have no father," she murmured, "if you won't be mine." "What? What? No!" Trask was across now and brushing the snowy traces of battle from his queer old cape. "No; I don't want any children. I had one once--a daughter." Split's heart beat fast. "She was a brat, with the temper of a little fiend, and no ear--absolutely none--for music; played like an elephant." How terribly confirmatory! "And what--what became of her?" whispered Split. "She ran away two years ago and--" "Two years!" "I said two, didn't I?" demanded the old professor, irascibly. Disgusted, Split turned her back on him. Why, two years ago Sissy had first called her an Indian; how right she had been! Two years ago she, Split, was making over all her dolls to Fom. Two years ago she had already discovered Jack Cody's fleet strength, his wonderful aptness at making swift sleds, in which her reckless spirit reveled, his mastership of other boys of his gang, and--her mastery of him. She turned and beckoned to him. His sweet whistle rang out in answer like a vocal salute, and in a moment she was seated again in front of him, with that deft, tail-like left leg of his steering them down, down over cross-street, through teams and sleighs and unwary pedestrians; past the miners coming off shift; past the lamplighter making his rounds in the crisp, clear cold of the evening; past the heavy-laden squaws, with their bowed heads, their papooses on their backs, their weary arms bearing home the spoils of a hard day's work, and the sore-eyed yellow dogs trudging, too, wearily and dejectedly at their heels, toward the rest of the wickiup and the acrid warmth of the sage-brush camp-fire.