"You didn't see 'Fonny' yesterday. No, Fifine! No!" Odalie had the air of detracting from some merit on Fifine's part, and as she played her little _rôle_ she trembled so with a realization of terror that she could scarcely stand. Yes, Fifine protested with pouts and anger. She _had_ seen him; she had seen him, only yesterday. "Where, Fifine, where?" cried Odalie bewildered, for the child sat upon the threshold all the day long, while the mother spun and wove and cooked within the sound of the babble of her voice, the gates of the stockade being closed in these troublous times, and always one or more of the men at work hard by in the fields without. The mystery was too fraught with menace to be disregarded, but Odalie hesitated, doubting the policy of this direct question. Fifine's interest, however, was suddenly renewed and her importance expanded. "Him wasn't all in," she explained. "Him top-feathers--him head--an' him ugly mouf!" She looked expectantly and half doubtfully at her mother, remembering her seeming anger. "Oh, how droll! One might perish with laughter!" screamed Odalie, with a piercing affectation of merriment, and once more Fifine banged her heels hilariously against the door-step, as she sat on the threshold, and cried in derision, "Fonny! Fonny!" "Where, Fifine? At the stockade? Some hole?" Fifine became angry at this suggestion, for had not "Dill" built the stockade, and would he build a stockade so Indians might get through and cut off her curls--she bounced them about her head--that Dill said were "'andsomer than any queen's." But Odalie _knew_ she had seen "Fonny" at the stockade, and Fifine contradicted, and after a spirited passage of "Did!" "Didn't!" "Did!" "Didn't!" Fifine arose to go and prove her proposition. There at the little spring, so sylvan sweet, so full, yet with the merest trickle of a branch that hardly wet the mint, so shyly hidden amongst its rocks, was a fissure. Odalie had often noted it; dark it was, for the shadows fell on it, and it might be deep; limited--it would but hold her piggin, should she thrust it there, or admit a man's head, yet not his shoulders--and this was what it had done yesterday, for protruding thence Fifine maintained she had seen Willinawaugh's face with "him top-feathers, him head, an' him ugly mouf!"