“It is marvellous,” he went on, dismissing the future in an effort to shake himself into a wholesomer frame of mind.  “It has been one long continuous miracle, the last few months, since you have been with me.  We have seen very little of each other, you know, since your childhood, and when I think upon it soberly it is hard to realize that you are really mine, sprung from me, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.  As the tangle-haired wild young creature of Dyea,—­a healthy, little, natural animal and nothing more,—­it required no imagination to accept you as one of the breed of Welse.  But as Frona, the woman, as you were to-night, as you are now as I look at you, as you have been since you came down the Yukon, it is hard . . .  I cannot realize . . .  I . . .”  He faltered and threw up his hands helplessly.  “I almost wish that I had given you no education, that I had kept you with me, faring with me, adventuring with me, achieving with me, and failing with me.  I would have known you, now, as we sit by the fire.  As it is, I do not.  To that which I did know there has been added, somehow (what shall I call it?), a subtlety; complexity,—­favorite words of yours,—­which is beyond me.

“No.”  He waved the speech abruptly from her lips.  She came over and knelt at his feet, resting her head on his knee and clasping his hand in firm sympathy.  “No, that is not true.  Those are not the words.  I cannot find them.  I fail to say what I feel.  Let me try again.  Underneath all you do carry the stamp of the breed.  I knew I risked the loss of that when I sent you away, but I had faith in the persistence of the blood and I took the chance; doubted and feared when you were gone; waited and prayed dumbly, and hoped oftentimes hopelessly; and then the day dawned, the day of days!  When they said your boat was coming, death rose and walked on the one hand of me, and on the other life everlasting. Made or marred; made or marred,—­the words rang through my brain till they maddened me.  Would the Welse remain the Welse?  Would the blood persist?  Would the young shoot rise straight and tall and strong, green with sap and fresh and vigorous?  Or would it droop limp and lifeless, withered by the heats of the world other than the little simple, natural Dyea world?

“It was the day of days, and yet it was a lingering, watching, waiting tragedy.  You know I had lived the years lonely, fought the lone fight, and you, away, the only kin.  If it had failed . . .  But your boat shot from the bluffs into the open, and I was half-afraid to look.  Men have never called me coward, but I was nearer the coward then than ever and all before.  Ay, that moment I had faced death easier.  And it was foolish, absurd.  How could I know whether it was for good or ill when you drifted a distant speck on the river?  Still, I looked, and the miracle began, for I did know.  You stood at the steering-sweep.  You were a Welse.  It seems so little; in truth it meant so much.  It was not to be expected of a mere woman, but of a Welse, yes.  And when Bishop went over the side, and you gripped the situation as imperatively as the sweep, and your voice rang out, and the Siwashes bent their backs to your will,—­then was it the day of days.”