Snowdrift is a half breed. I believe she is a white child."
Father Ambrose smiled tolerantly: "Still of that belief? But, it is impossible. I know her mother. She, too, was a child of this mission—long before your time. She is one of the few Indians who did not forget the handicraft nor the letters." The old man paused and shook his head sadly, "And until she brought this child here I believed that she had not forgotten the Word. For she continued to profess her belief, and among her people she waged war upon the rum-runners. Later, I, myself, married her to a Dog Rib, a man who was the best of his tribe. Then they disappeared and I heard nothing from her until she brought this child, Snowdrift, to us here at the mission. She told me that her husband had been drowned in a rapid, and then she told me—not in confessional, for she would not confess, that this was her child and that her father was a white man, but that he was not her husband."
"She may have lied. Loving the child, she may have feared that we would take her away, or institute a search for her people."
"She loves the child—with the mother love. But she did not lie. If she had lied, would she not have said that after the death of her husband she had married this white man? I would have believed her. But, evidently the idea of truth is more firmly implanted in her heart than—other virtues—so she told the truth—knowing even as she did so the
light in which she would stand before men, and also the standing of her daughter."
"Oh, it is a shame!" cried the Nun, "But, still I do not believe it! I cannot believe it! Snowdrift's skin, where the sun and the wind have not turned it, is as white as mine."
"But her hair and eyes are the dark hair and eyes of the Indian. And when she was first brought here, have you forgotten that she fought like a little wild cat, and that she ran away and trailed her band to its encampment? Could a white child have done that?"
"But after she had been brought back, and had begun to learn she fought just as hard against returning to the tribe for a brief vacation. She is a dreamer of dreams. She loves music and appreciates its beauty, and the beauty of art and the poets."
"She can trail an animal through country that would throw many an Indian at fault."
"She hates the sordid. She hates the rum-runners, and the greasy smoke-blackened tepees of the Indians. In her heart there has been an awakening. She longs for something better—higher. She has consented to go to the convent."