It was all so ludicrously pathetic.  They asked her if she would not like to come down with them to the Indian School; and she looked wistfully and did not answer.  Oh, God of Little Children, where are You?  Are the Lambs outside the fold not Yours also?

When they pointed out the creatures of the woods to her, they found she did not know a squirrel from a chipmunk; and she pronounced the merry chattering “odjus.”  When a cat bird came tittering on his tail, squeaking out every imaginary note of gladness and the frontiersman explained that this fellow sang only after his family had been raised whereas the other birds sang before, she said he “wazn’t as interestin’ as th’ elephants on the bill o’ fare.”

“Let’s see!  There’s three trails here about!” Matthews was cogitating with his gaze on Eleanor.  “There’s the one across to the Upper Mesas; an’ there’s one back behind over th’ shoulder of the Holy Cross down to the Lake Behind the Peak; an’ there ought to be one between, runnin’ up to the snows!  Think y’r good for climbin’ over this windfall while A carry this little puss on m’ shoulder?  Steer for the snow ahead!  Don’t mind my laggin’ back!  Go on ahead an’ wait for us!  A’m goin’ t’ see if A can’t mine down to some gold beneath th’ slime o’ th’ slums!  It’s not in the course o’ nature that any child should be blind t’ this world, Miss Eleanor, if A can open th’ doors for her!  Go ahead; an’ if y’ find a good sittin’ down place, just rest quiet an’ wait for us an’ don’t worry if we’re long comin’!  If A can’t make her love God’s big play ground, A’m no preacher!”

Eleanor laughed.  Her last mining down to veins of gold had not been a particular success.  She looked back at the two; the massive thewed frontiersman with the shock of white hair and ruddy cheeks and almost boyish eyes; the little tawdry bundle of rags on his shoulder, with the black hollow eyes full of nameless fear and nameless knowledge, and the little old hard mouth with a dreadful tense sadness about the droop.  She heard the big genial voice with the roll of Scotch-Canadian drawling out its r’s, and the child’s thin “Yes, Sor, m’ Faather;” then the child burst into a joyous laugh.  Eleanor wondered what he could have said to elicit that laugh.  When she glanced back, the old frontiersman had Lizzie standing on his outstretched hand holding to a branch overhead peering in a deserted hawk’s nest.  Even as Eleanor looked, the little future acrobat went scrabbling up into the tree with another joyous laugh.

Then, with that spirit of the child, which possesses us all when we give ourselves to the genii of the woods, Eleanor was following the long lanes of light between the giant spruces—­the long lanes of light that lead on and on and on, ahead of you; out over the edge of the world into the realms of dreams and holiday and joy, where there is no Greed, and there is no Lust, and there is no nagging Care,