The voice was like an angry demon's--not a trace was there in it of
the yellow-haired, blue-eyed, laughing-lipped boy who had driven
away so gaily to the dance five hours before.

"Shame? Why should I be ashamed of the rites of my people any more
than you should be ashamed of the customs of yours--of a marriage
more sacred and holy than half of your white man's mockeries."

It was the voice of another nature in the girl--the love and the
pleading were dead in it.

"Do you mean to tell me, Charlie--you who have studied my race and
their laws for years--do you mean to tell me that, because there was
no priest and no magistrate, my mother was not married? Do you mean
to say that all my forefathers, for hundreds of years back, have been
illegally born? If so, you blacken my ancestry beyond--beyond--beyond
all reason."

"No, Christie, I would not be so brutal as that; but your father
and mother live in more civilized times. Father O'Leary has been at
the post for nearly twenty years. Why was not your father straight
enough to have the ceremony performed when he _did_ get the chance?"

The girl turned upon him with the face of a fury. "Do you suppose,"
she almost hissed, "that my mother would be married according to
your _white_ rites after she had been five years a wife, and I had
been born in the meantime? No, a thousand times I say, _no_. When
the priest came with his notions of Christianizing, and talked
to them of re-marriage by the Church, my mother arose and said,