the Charlevoix road. I was either Barney Mabo or some people called me Barney with the Mabos, giving me no last name of my own. When I got older, I used to do chores for the white farmers around, and they treated me like white. One of them got me a job in Boyne City so I could go to high school. That was when Azen gave me the ring; he knew I wasn't coming back to him—to stay. He never showed the ring to any one else—except maybe to some of his Indian friends. I never did, either, Miss Carew."
He considered it for a moment, holding it in the palm of his bare hand; they were proceeding slowly side by side. "Being a woman's ring," he said, "I supposed it was my mother's—whoever she was and however she happened to give it, and me, to Noah Jo. But it didn't seem to me that I could do anything about finding her, except by accident. So I just kept the ring and tried not to think too much about her. Being busy helped. You see," he smiled a little in his retrospection as he put the ring away, "it wasn't any absolute cinch going through Boyne high school and supporting yourself. Then the war came along; and I went."
"In 1917?"
"I got in our own army then; but I had the luck to go just after the Marne, with the Canadians."
"Oh! Did you? That was fine!"
"I had the luck to be pinged a little the next fall—a 'cushy blighter', you know?"
"Yes; a wound taking you back to London."
"That's it. I spent the winter of 1915–1916 there, Miss Carew. I was just a kid, not hurt a lot but temporarily on crutches, though I could get about pretty well. England was laying herself out for the
