Occasionally he made friends with an Indian and asked him to his hut, but this was rare. They looked upon him as a pale-face who, having vexed the Great Spirit, was repenting in solitude. He spent his days in wandering and study. He learned the geological history of the place from the hieroglyphics God puts upon the rocks for man to read. He pressed hundreds of flowers, and knew what Jehovah had intended for the gardens of the growing West. He wrote some, and grew happy in his isolated existence; yet there was no flow of animal life within him, no leaping of the heart for joy. The past was a sealed book; the present written with the indifference of a stoic; and the future a blank leaf with no desire to write upon it.
Such was Giles Mortimer when a tender child was laid before him—a magnet to draw out a heart.
He called her Waify. For days and weeks he dressed her, washed her delicate clothes with his own hands, fed her, and made a wagon of rough boards and drew her to the lakes, that she might dabble her hands and feet in the clear waters. Soon the baby lips, as if taught by angels, said “Papa!” and the man’s affections swept back upon him as a flood. He kissed her again and again, and she, all unconscious of the reason, put her fingers in his hair and beard, and laughed with that merry laugh that makes most homes, even in their decay, full of the echoes of childhood. A new look was born into his face, a look of manly protection, as though a soul was given to his charge.
Six months came and went. Little feet strolled outside the walls. She seemed to look vainly for something to play with, gathered blades of grass and flowers in her creeping, and showed a longing for a fuller life. Mortimer saw it, aroused his sleeping ambition, put out the fire in the old cave, put Waify into the wagon, with a blanket about her that he might keep in memory the first night she slept under it, tossed his half dozen books and small bundle of clothes at her feet, and started for the city. Kind people gave them a shelter at night, and Waify made friends everywhere.
To the home of a lady he had known among the early settlers of Milwaukee he carried his precious charge, and started this time for business with a strength and energy that knew no failure. There were some struggles, but at length a place was found with a land-broker. The city was growing rapidly. Small pieces of land were purchased as by economy some money was saved.
After many months of labor a small house was hired, a pretty play-room arranged for the wee Waify, a good servant obtained, and Giles Mortimer was a happy man. No longer hating the world or its people, but having grown strong from obstacles overcome, he had sympathy for others and a genial look and manner that gave him the fascination of a woman.
Every night Waify came a little way to meet him. Then by the firelight he told her cheery stories, made rabbits for her on the wall, and with her on his knees thanked God for something human to love.
School life began. A tiny primer was purchased, and Mortimer, more the man than ever, taught her the alphabet. “A” she remembered from two rivers and a brook across. “B” was a river with two little crooked ones, and “C” stood for the cave. Every summer since they lived in the city he had taken her thither and showed her where she used to live.
“Here is the place where you were, Waify; here the table where I put my baby; here the old stove where I warmed your milk; here the green grass where you played.”