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Then the Canadian Government appointed young Mansion special forest warden, gave him a “V. R.” hammer, with which he was to stamp each and every stick of timber he could catch being hauled off the Reserve by white men; licensed him to carry firearms for self-protection, and told him to “go ahead.” He “went ahead.” Night after night he lay, concealing himself in the marshes, the forests, the trails, the concession lines, the river road, the Queen’s highway, seizing all the timber he could, destroying all the whisky, turning the white liquor traders off Indian lands, and fighting as only a young, earnest and inspired man can fight. These hours and conditions began to tell on his physique. The marshes breathed their miasma into his blood–the dreaded fever had him in its claws. Lydia was a born nurse. She knew little of thermometers, of charts, of technical terms, but her ability and instincts in the sick-room were unerring; and, when her husband succumbed to a raging fever, love lent her hands an inspiration and her brain a clarity that would have shamed many a professional nurse.

For hours, days, weeks, she waited, tended, watched, administered, labored and loved beside the sick man’s bed. She neither slept nor ate enough to carry her through the ordeal, but love lent her strength, and she battled and fought for his life as only an adoring woman can. Her wonderful devotion was the common talk of the country. She saw no one save Mr. Evans and the doctors. She never left the sick-room save when her baby needed her. But it all seemed so useless, so in vain, when one dark morning the doctor said, “We had better send for his father and mother.”

Poor Lydia! Her heart was nearly breaking. She hurriedly told the doctor the cause that had kept them away so long, adding, “Is it so bad as that? Oh, doctor, must I send for them? They don’t want to come.” Before the good man could reply, there was a muffled knock at the door. Then Milly’s old wrinkled face peered in, and Milly’s voice said whisperingly, “His people–they here.”

“Whose people? Who are here?” almost gasped Lydia.

“His father and his mother,” answered the old woman. “They downstairs.”

For a brief moment there was silence. Lydia could not trust herself to speak, but ill as he was, George’s quick Indian ear had caught Milly’s words. He murmured, “Mother! mother! Oh, my mother!”

“Bring her, quickly, quickly!” said Lydia to the doctor.

It seemed to the careworn girl that a lifetime followed before the door opened noiselessly, and there entered a slender little old Indian woman, in beaded leggings, moccasins, “short skirt,” and a blue “broadcloth” folded about her shoulders. She glanced swiftly at the bed, but with the heroism of her race went first towards Lydia, laid her cheek silently beside the white girl’s, then looked directly into her eyes.

“Lydia!” whispered George, “Lydia!” At the word both women moved swiftly to his side. “Lydia,” he repeated, “my mother cannot speak the English, but her cheek to yours means that you are her blood relation.”

The effort of speech almost cost him a swoon, but his mother’s cheek was now against his own, and the sweet, dulcet Mohawk language of his boyhood returned to his tongue; he was speaking it to his mother, speaking it lovingly, rapidly. Yet, although Lydia never understood a word, she did not feel an outsider, for the old mother’s hand held her own, and she knew that at last the gulf was bridged.

* * * * *

It was two days later, when the doctor pronounced George Mansion out of danger, that the sick man said to his wife: “Lydia, it is all over–the pain, the estrangement. My mother says that you are her daughter. My father says that you are his child. They heard of your love, your nursing, your sweetness. They want to know if you will call them ‘father, mother.’ They love you, for you are one of their own.”