But she had an unbounded confidence in the kindly maternity of Nature, and trusted her children to the breast of the Great Mother as freely as she did herself in her own motherlessness.

And this confidence was rarely betrayed.

Rats, mice, snails, wildcats, panther, and bear never touched her lost waifs.

Even the elements were kindly; an Amplach twin buried under a snowdrift in high altitudes reappeared smilingly in the spring in all its wooden and painted integrity.

We were all Pantheists then--and believed this implicitly.