"I don't want to touch her, Catharine," he said gently, trying to pacify her. "Believe me, I don't want to touch her."
The woman's whole being changed. A thousand mother-lights gleamed from her eyes, a thousand measures of mother-love stormed at her heart. She stepped close, very close to him and laid her small brown hand on his, then drawing him nearer to her said: "Yes you do want to touch her; you not speak truth when you say 'no.' You do want to touch her!" With a rapid movement she flung back the blankets, then slipping her bare arm about him she bent his form until he was looking straight into the child's face—a face the living miniature of his own! His eyes, his hair, his small kindly mouth, his fair, perfect skin. He staggered erect.
"Catharine! what does it mean? What does it mean?" he cried hoarsely.
"Your child—" she half questioned, half affirmed.
"Mine? Mine?" he called, without human understanding in his voice.
"Oh, Catharine! Where did you get her?"
"The shores of Kootenay Lake," she answered.
"Was—was—she alone?" he cried.
The woman looked away, slowly shaking her head, and her voice was very gentle as she replied: "No, she alive a little, but the other, whose arms 'round her, she not alive; my people, the Kootenay Indians, and I—we—we bury that other."
For a moment there was a speaking silence, the young Wingate, with the blessed realization that half his world had been saved for him, flung himself on his knees, and, with his arms locked about the little girl, was calling:
"Margie! Margie! Papa's little Margie girl! Do you remember papa?
Oh, Margie! Do you? Do you?"