For what was this coming out of the west?--this fair white creature on her snowy mount, with the golden sunlight on her yellow hair, her glowing face, her modest maiden breast. Flowers wreathed her all about and a White Bow gleamed at her saddle horn. Behind her, and one on either side, rode dusky warriors, brave in their finest trappings and turning a reverent, attentive ear to the Maid's words. Their horses' footfalls deadened by the sodden grass, slowly they came into fuller view, as a picture grows under the painter's brush. Still the man on the black horse facing them sat still, spellbound. Could this be Kitty, his Kitty; to whom his thoughts had turned as to a half-grown, playful child, and over whom he had domineered with the masterful pride of boyhood? He was a man now, boyhood was past; but he had quite forgotten that girlhood also passes and the child becomes a woman. He had grown rich and strong. After her supposed death he had devoted himself wholly to money-getting with the singleness of purpose that never fails of its object. He had come back to his old home to spend the fortune he had gained, feeling himself a master among men and his strength that of wisdom as well as wealth. Now all his pride and arrogance passed from him before the nobility of this woman approaching. For on her youthful face sat the dignity which is higher than pride and from her beautiful eyes gleamed the beneficent love more far-reaching than wealth. After a moment Gaspar rode slowly forward again, and soon espying, but not recognizing, him, the Sun Maid advanced. Then all at once the black horse and the white galloped to a meet. "Kitty! My Kitty!" [Illustration: "KITTY! MY KITTY!" _Page 258_.] "Gaspar!" Their hands closed in a clasp that banished years of separation, and the black eyes searched the blue, questioning for the one sweet answer that rules all the world. There was a swift self-revelation in both hearts; a consciousness that this was what the God who made them had meant from the beginning. With a grave exaltation too deep and too high for words, the pure man and the pure woman came to their destiny and accepted it. Then their hands fell apart, the black Tempest wheeled into place beside the white Snowbird, and, as on a day long in the past, the pair passed swiftly and lightly eastward toward the lakeside village and their home. "Ugh! The Sun Maid has found her mate!" muttered the foremost warrior grimly, and followed with his company at a soberer pace. CHAPTER XIX. THE CROOKED LOG. "I tell you what, Chicago's a-growing. First _we_ come; then Gaspar; then Kitty and him get married; and I go to keeping tavern in the parson's house; and his son, One, goes up north to take a place in Gaspar's business; and Gaspar sends Two and Three east to study law and medicine; and Four and his pa come to board in our tavern; and Osceolo----"