“At any rate, your father wouldn’t consent to our marriage, and you wouldn’t be willing to wed me without his permission.” The young woman lifted her head. Her face brightened, paying her hand caressingly upon his knee, she murmured faintly: “Father wouldn’t oppose our marriage, Ross, if you would quit your roving ways, give up your Indian friends and rough associates, and settle down to work. He thinks you shiftless—that you wouldn’t provide well for me—would never accumulate anything.” Douglas’s handsome face flushed hotly as he asked: “Is that all the reason your father had for ordering me from his door and forbidding me to speak to you?” She was silent for a moment. Then she replied hesitatingly: “Y-e-s—the main reason.” “And the others?” His voice was hard and cold. She dropped her lids, but did not answer. “Amy, tell me,” he cried almost fiercely, catching her wrist in his firm grasp. “He says you—you don’t—know who your father was,” she faltered. He sprang to his feet, his face aflame. “It’s a base lie!” he began. Then he set his teeth and paused a moment to regain control of himself. Presently he resumed in quiet, even tones: “Amy, it’s a mistake. I know who my father was—or is, if he be alive. I’m no illegitimate child. My mother’s husband was John Douglas, an intelligent but dissipated and unprincipled man, who abused her—and finally deserted her, shortly after I was born. Her health rapidly failed; and she died when I was but a child, leaving me to the care of her brother, a roving and adventurous fur-trader. This uncle wandered from tribe to tribe, bartering arms, blankets, and trinkets, for peltries. On one of these trading trips he took me with him—when I was eight years old—and left me with the Wyandots, while he proceeded on his journey. For four years I remained with the savages. They were kind to me. I learned their ways; I played with the youth of the tribe. I absorbed their ideas, manners, and customs—I fell in love with the wild, free life of the redmen. Then my uncle again put in an appearance, and, taking me with him, returned to the East.