Norton lay very still for a few moments trying to realize it all.  Then raising himself on one elbow, he peered out across an absolutely level open prairie.  A waning moon hung low in the west, its thin radiance brooding above the plains like a mist, but the light was sufficient to reveal some half-dozen tepees, that lifted their smoky tops and tent poles not three hundred yards from the railway track.  Norton looked at his watch.  He could just make out that it was two o’clock in the morning.  Could he ever wait until daylight?  So he asked himself over and over again, while his head (with its big mop of hair that would curl in spite of the hours he spent in trying to brush it straight) snuggled down among the pillows, and his grave young eyes blinked longingly at those coveted tepees.  And the next thing he knew a face was thrust between his berth-curtains, a thin, handsome, clean-shaven face, adorned with gold-rimmed nose glasses, and crowned with a crop of hair much like his own, and a voice he loved very much was announcing in imitation of the steward, “Breakfast is now ready in the dining-car.”

Norton sprang up, pitching the blankets aside, and seized Professor Allan by the arm.  “Oh, Pater,” he cried, pointing to the window, “do you see them—–­the Indians, the tepees?  It’s the Blackfoot Reserve!  I heard the trainmen say so in the night.”

“Yes, my boy,” replied the Professor, seating himself on the edge of his son’s berth.  “And I also see your good mother and estimable father dying of starvation, if they have to wait much longer for you to appear with them in the dining-car—­”

But Norton was already scrambling into his clothes, his usually solemn eyes shining with excitement.  For years his father, who was professor in one of the great universities in Toronto, had shared his studies on Indian life, character, history and habits with his only son.  They had read together, and together had collected a splendid little museum of Indian relics and curios.  They had always admired the fine old warlike Blackfoot nation, but never did they imagine when they set forth on this summer vacation trip to the Coast, that they would find themselves stalled among these people of their dreams.

“Well, Tony, boy, this is a treat for you and father,” his mother’s voice was saying, “and the conductor tells me we shall be here probably forty-eight hours.  The Bow River is on the rampage, the bridge near Calgary is washed away, and thank goodness we shall be comfortably housed and fed in this train.”  And Mrs. Allan’s smiling face appeared beside the Professor’s.

“Tony,” as his parents called him, had never dressed so quickly in all the sixteen years of his life, notwithstanding the cramped space of a sleeping-car, and presently he was seated in the diner, where the broad windows disclosed a sweeping view of the scattered tepees, each with its feather of upward floating smoke curling away from its apex.  Many of the Indians were already crowding about the train, some with polished buffalo horns for sale, and all magnificently dressed in buckskin, decorated with fine, old-fashioned bead work, and the quills of the porcupine.