“Does he smite you?”

The smile vanished, as the child slowly nodded three times.

“Yes, awful.”

“What did you do to make him smite you?”

Silence.

“What was it?”

The stranger’s voice was not so stern as it might have been, and the smile came back and dimpled the child’s cheeks, as he answered,—­“Pepper in ve dining-room fireplace.”

“What made you do that, you sinner?”

“A boy told me.  You ought to have heard vem sneeze, and ven papa fumped me.”

“Much?”

The child eyed him distrustfully,

“What for do you want to know?”

“Oh, because—­you see, I used to get thumped, myself, sometimes.”

“Yes, he fumped awful, and ven he stopped and sneezed, and I sneezed, too, and we all sneezed and had to stop.”

“And then did you turn the other also?”

“No; I hadn’t begun yet.  I only sneezed a great deal, and papa said somefing about rooty ceilings.”

In vain the stranger pondered over the last remark.  He was unable to discover its application, and accordingly he passed to a more obvious question.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“What’s yours?”

“Gifford Barrett.”

“Mine is McAlister Holden.”

“Um-m.  I think I haven’t met you before.”

“You could if you’d wanted to, I live in ve brown house, and I’ve seen you lots of times.  Once you ’most stepped on me.”

“Did I?  How did that happen?”

“You were finking of fings and got in my way.”

“Was that it?”

“Vat’s what my papa says, when I do it.  He says I ought to look where I am going.”  The boy’s tone was severe.

There was a pause, while Mac swung his hoop against a post.  On the rebound, it struck the stranger a sharp blow just under and back of the knees.  He turned and glared at the child.

“I feel just as if I should like to say confound it,” Mac drawled, twisting his pink lips with relish of the forbidden word.

“So should I. Suppose we do.  But how old are you?”

“’Most four.”

“But little boys like you shouldn’t say such words.”

“My papa does; I heard him.  My mamma puts soap in my mouf, when I do it,” he added, with an artless frankness which appeared to be characteristic of him.  Then abruptly he changed the subject.  “Ve cook has gone, and mamma made such a funny pudding, last night,” he announced.  “It stuck and broke ve dish to get it out.  Good-bye.  Vis is where I live.”  And he clattered up the steps and vanished, hoop and all, through the front doorway, leaving the stranger to marvel at the precocity of western children and at the complexity of their vocabularies.

A week later, they met again, this time however not by accident.  The young man had tried meanwhile to find out something about the child; but his sister whose guest he was, had moved to Helena only a month before, and she could furnish no clue to the mystery.  His visit was proving a dull one; Mac had been vastly entertaining, so, for some days, the stranger had been watching in vain for another glimpse of the boy.  At length, his efforts were rewarded.  Strolling past the brown house, one morning, he became aware of a tiny figure sitting on the steps in the bright sunshine and wrapped from head to foot in a plaid horse-blanket.