“I am a lonely man,” he wrote; “I buried my wife and only child many years ago, and have lived here ever since, with only an old Indian woman to take care of me.  I don’t want to press you against your will; and there’s a house in the village that you can hire; but it will go against me sorely not to have you in my house at the first.  I want to see you, and to see your little daughter; I can’t help feeling as if the Lord had laid out for us to be friends more than common.”

Reuben hesitated.  The shyness of his nature made him shrink from other men’s houses.  But Draxy inclined strongly to the Elder’s proposition.  “Oh, think father, how lonely he must be.  Suppose you hadn’t mother nor me, father dear!” and Draxy kissed her father’s cheek; “and think how glad you have been that you came to live with uncle,” she added.

Reuben looked lovingly at Captain Melville, but said nothing.

“I’ll tell ye what I think, Reuben;” said the Captain.  “It’s my belief that you’n that parson’ll take to each other.  His letters sound like your talk.  Somehow, I’ve got an uncommon respect for that man, considerin’ he’s a parson:  it’s my advice to ye, to take up with his offer.”

“And it seems no more than polite, father,” persisted Draxy:  “after he has done so much for us.  We need not say how long we will stay in his house, you know.”

“Supposin’ you go up first, Draxy,” said Reuben, hesitatingly, “an’ see how ’tis.  I always did hate Injuns.”

“Oh!” said Draxy; she had hardly observed the mention of that feature in the Elder’s household, and she laughed outright.  Her ideas of the ancestral savage were too vague to be very alarming.  “If she has lived all these years with this good old minister, she must be civilized and kind,” said Draxy.  “I’m not afraid of her.”

“But I think it would be a great deal better for me to go first,” she continued, more and more impressed with the new idea.  “Then I can be sure beforehand about everything, and get things all in order for you; and there’ll be Mr. Kinney to take care of me; I feel as if he was a kind of father to everybody.”  And Draxy in her turn began to wonder about the Elder’s appearance as he had wondered about hers.  Her mental picture was quite as unlike the truth as was his.  She fancied him not unlike her father, but much older, with a gentle face, and floating white hair.  Dim purposes of how she might make his lonely old age more cheerful, floated before her mind.  “It must be awful,” thought she, “to live years and years all alone with an Indian.”

When Elder Kinney read Reuben’s letter, saying that they would send their daughter up first to decide what would be best for them to do, he brought his hand down hard on the table and said “Whew!” again.

“Well, I do declare,” thought he to himself, “I’m afraid they’re dreadful shiftless folks, to send that girl way up here, all alone by herself; and how’s such a child’s that goin’ to decide anything, I should like to know?”