"Do some thinking for yourself. You are a man now, twenty-one, and one day over. You can unravel this part." He sat with impenetrable face, waiting for me to speak.
"I do not know. Lettie Conlow has always been silly about—about the boys. All the young folks say she likes me, has always liked me."
"How much cause have you given her? Be sure your memory is clear." My father spoke sternly.
"Father," I stood before him now, "I am a man, as you say, and I have come up through a boyhood no better nor worse than the other boys whom you know here. We were a pretty decent gang even before you went away to the War. After that we had to be men. But all these years, Father, there has been only one girl for me. I never gave Lettie Conlow a ghost of a reason for thinking I cared for her. But she is old Conlow's own child, and she has a bitter, jealous nature."
"Well, what took her to the—to the old cabin out there?"
"I do not know. She may have been hidden out there to spy what we—I was doing."
"Did she have on a red blanket too, Saturday afternoon?"
"Well, now I wonder—." My mind was in a whirl. Could she be in league against me? What did it mean? I sat down to think.
"Father, there's something I've never yet understood about this town," I burst out impetuously. "If it is to have anything to do with my future I ought to know it. Father Le Claire would tell me only half his story. You know more of O'mie than you will tell me. And here is a jealous girl whose father consented to give Marjie to a brutal Indian out of hatred for her father; and it is his daughter who trails me over the prairie because I am with Marjie. Why not tell me now what you know?"
My father sat looking thoughtfully at me. At last he spoke.