Woman is a sort of Pandora’s Box, the lid whereof is being forever raised, revealing the secrets within.  The plighted maiden was flushed of cheek and unusually bright of eye when she returned to her home that evening.  She could give her guardian no satisfactory account of her long absence, and told a very confused story about two paths, “you know,” that were “very much alike”; but that “one led away around a poplar wood and out upon a portion of the prairie” which she did “not know.”  Here the sweet pet had got astray, and wandered around, although “it was so silly,” till the sound of the bells of St. Boniface tolling ten had apprised her of the hour and also let her know where she was.  Her guardian took the explanation, and contented himself with observing that he hoped it would be her last evening upon the prairie, straying around like an elk that had lost her mate.

“Jennie,” said her sister, when they were alone, “you have not been telling the truth.  You did not get astray on the prairie.  Somebody has been courting you, and you are in love with him.”

“I am in love; and it is true that some one has been courting me.  I had intended to tell you all about it, my heart is so full.  Now can you tell me who may my lover be?”

“I hope, Jennie,” and the sister’s eyes showed a blending of severity and sorrow, “that it is not Alexander.”

“It is Alexander.  Why should it not be?  Is he not handsome, and gentle, and good?  Wherefore then not he?”

“My God, do you know what such an alliance would cost you, would cost us all?  Marriage with a half-breed would be a degradation; and a stain upon the whole family that never could be wiped out.  O my poor unfortunate sister, ruin is what such a marriage would mean.  Just that, my darling sister, and no less.”

“I care not for that.  I love him with all my heart and soul, and pledged myself to-night a hundred times to be his.  I never can love another man; and he only shall possess me.  What care I for the degradation of which you speak, as measured against the crowning misery, or the supreme happiness of my life?  No; when Alexander is ready to say to me, Come, I shall go to him, and no threat nor persuasion shall dissuade me.”

She spoke like all the heroic girls who afterwards meekly untie their bonnets just as they were ready to go to the church to wed against their keeper’s will; and then sit down awaiting orders as to whom they must marry.  Jennie was not the only girl who, in the first flush of passion, is prepared to go through fire, or die at the stake for the man she loves.  Withal,—­but that the proprieties forbid it—­whenever young women make these dramatic declarations, the most appropriate course would be to give them a sound spanking, and put an end to the tragic business.

Nellie thought it her duty, and I suppose it was, to tell her bear-like guardian what had befallen to her sister.  He was less disturbed on hearing the intelligence than Nellie supposed, and merely expressed some cold-blooded surprise at the presumption of the half-breed.  He sat at his desk, and taking a sheet of paper, wrote this letter: