The master was in a thoughtful, troubled mood. He paid little attention to the glories of the fresh spring day. What he had just heard from the lips of the settler disturbed him greatly. That beautiful girl his half-sister! The child of his own father and the hated Rachel Carter! Rachel Carter, the woman he had been brought up to despise, the harlot who had stolen his father away, the scarlet wanton at whose door the death of his mother was laid! That evil woman, Rachel Carter! Could she, this foulest of thieves, be the mother of so lovely, so sensitive, so perfect a creature as Viola Gwyn? As he rode frowningly along, oblivious to the low chant of the darkey and the song of the first spring warblers, he revisualized the woman he had known in his earliest childhood. Strangely enough, the face of Rachel Carter had always remained more firmly, more indelibly impressed upon his memory than that of his own mother. This queer, unusual circumstance may be easily, reasonably accounted for: his grandfather's dogged, almost daily lessons in hate. He was not allowed to forget Rachel Carter,--not for one instant. Always she was kept before him by that bitter, vindictive old man who was his mother's father,--even up to the day that he lay on his deathbed. Small wonder, then, that his own mother's face had faded from his memory while that of Rachel Carter remained clear and vivid, as he had known it now for twenty years. The passing years might perforce bring about changes in the face and figure of Rachel Carter, but they could not, even in the smallest detail, alter the picture his mind's eye had carried so long and faithfully. He could think of her only as she was when he last saw her, twenty years ago: tall and straight, with laughing eyes and white teeth, and the colour of tan-bark in her cheeks. Then there had been little Minda,--tiny Minda who existed vaguely as a name, nothing more. He had a dim recollection of hearing his elders say that the babe with the yellow curls had been drowned when a boat turned over far away in the big brown river. Some one had come to his grandfather's house with the news. He recalled hearing the talk about the accident, and his grandfather lifting his fist toward the sky and actually blaming God for something! He never forgot that. His grandfather had blamed God! He had thought of asking Striker about his father's widow, after hearing the truth about Viola, but a stubborn pride prevented. It had been on his tongue to inquire when and where Robert Gwynne and Rachel Carter were married,--he did not doubt that they had been legally married,--but he realized in time that in all probability the settler, as well as every one else in the community, was totally uninformed as to the past life of Robert and Rachel Gwynne. Besides, the query would reveal an ignorance on his part that he was loath to expose to speculation.