he had given the name of an Indian warrior famous long ago in the Low Country, passed over the cottage bound for their feeding grounds on the salt flats. Marston, a lover of all wild creatures, a born naturalist with something of the poet in him, always found rare delight in watching the feathered army pass, and sometimes he would call excitedly to Ellen, busy indoors preparing breakfast, to come out on the porch and share the wonder of the spectacle.
But this morning the little old man, sitting in his favorite chair on the porch awaiting the ibises' coming, would hardly call his granddaughter. His mind was troubled. His sun-tanned face wore a frown and the vivid blue eyes above his short white beard were strangely cold and hard. He was thinking of Red Cam's oath and of the quarrel that had led to it and of what might come of it.
Cam Reppington, a gentleman born, could play the gentleman when he wanted to; and Ellen, whatever she might have heard, had never seen him drunk. In the old city days, which had ended with the fatal affair of the bank's money, he had been a clever hand with women; and when this girl took his fancy he had not found it hard to lie his way into her good graces so that for a while she had overruled her grandfather's objections to Cam's visits.
