was discovered to have rubbed her face and arms with yellow and red ochre, confessedly the free gift of Jim Hooker.  It was to Clarence alone that she admitted the significance and purport of these offerings.  “Jim gived ’em to me,” she said, “and Jim’s a kind of Injin hisself that won’t hurt me; and when bad Injins come, they’ll think I’m his Injin baby and run away.  And Jim said if I’d just told the Injins when they came to kill papa and mamma, that I b’longed to him, they’d hev runned away.”

“But,” said the practical Clarence, “you could not; you know you were with Mrs. Peyton all the time.”

“Kla’uns,” said Susy, shaking her head and fixing her round blue eyes with calm mendacity on the boy, “don’t you tell me.  I was there!”

Clarence started back, and nearly fell over the wagon in hopeless dismay at this dreadful revelation of Susy’s powers of exaggeration.  “But,” he gasped, “you know, Susy, you and me left before—­”

“Kla’uns,” said Susy calmly, making a little pleat in the skirt of her dress with her small thumb and fingers, “don’t you talk to me.  I was there.  I’se a SERIVER!  The men at the fort said so!  The SERIVERS is allus, allus there, and allus allus knows everythin’.”

Clarence was too dumfounded to reply.  He had a vague recollection of having noticed before that Susy was very much fascinated by the reputation given to her at Fort Ridge as a “survivor,” and was trying in an infantile way to live up to it.  This the wicked Jim had evidently encouraged.  For a day or two Clarence felt a little afraid of her, and more lonely than ever.

It was in this state, and while he was doggedly conscious that his association with Jim did not prepossess Mrs. Peyton or her brother in his favor, and that the former even believed him responsible for Susy’s unhallowed acquaintance with Jim, that he drifted into one of those youthful escapades on which elders are apt to sit in severe but not always considerate judgment.  Believing, like many other children, that nobody cared particularly for him, except to restrain him, discovering, as children do, much sooner than we complacently imagine, that love and preference have no logical connection with desert or character, Clarence became boyishly reckless.  But when, one day, it was rumored that a herd of buffalo was in the vicinity, and that the train would be delayed the next morning in order that a hunt might be organized, by Gildersleeve, Benham, and a few others, Clarence listened willingly to Jim’s proposition that they should secretly follow it.

To effect their unhallowed purpose required boldness and duplicity.  It was arranged that shortly after the departure of the hunting party Clarence should ask permission to mount and exercise one of the team horses—­a favor that had been frequently granted him; that in the outskirts of the camp he should pretend that the horse ran away with him, and Jim would start in pursuit.  The absence of the