atory, and
the meaning was plainly to be read in the wonderful play of expression
in Peter's dark face and flashing, grey-green eyes, in the faultless
artistic skill of his every gesture, wherewith he painted what he had
in his mind almost without need of words.

It was a barbaric song of freedom--a song of the rush and roar of the
buffalo hunt, a song of the evening fires before the lodges; of the
call of birds at the dawn, and the evening star hanging silver above
the pines; of the limitless northward world, and the homeless wind of
the prairies; of the flowers whiter than snow, redder than blood; of
the pipe of willow-flutes in the dusk, and the triumph-cry of the
raiders as they thunder home to the music of a hundred stolen
hoofs--all these things Dick thought of as he listened, only
understanding a word here and there, yet charmed to the bottom of his
restless soul by the art of Peter Many-Names. It was a chant of the
spring, of roving feet and tents that are never in one place for long;
a gipsy song of the north. And as such Dick's very soul responded to
it.

He stared at the Indian with fascinated eyes even after that wild
speech was ended.

Peter came close to him, with those hard glittering grey eyes of his
gazing into the English boy's softer ones. And suddenly he spoke
again, in English. "You come with me?" he whispered.

And Dick answered, against his own will, in a voice which did not
appear to be his. "Yes, I will come!" he said. There was no need of
explanation.

CHAPTER VII.

A Message from the Wanderer.

A few weeks had passed, and sugar-making time had gone for that
year--gone in a sudden burst of life-giving warmth and moisture, in a
tumult of tentative bird songs, in a broidery of earliest green things
which heralded the swift, brief, infinitely caressing spring of the
north. Gone also was peace and happiness from Stephanie's heart, and
the kindly Collinsons grieved with her. For no sooner was the
sugar-making over than Dick disappeared, leaving no word or trace
behind. And with him disappeared Peter Many-Names.

They had looked daily for his return. But as the sweet keen weather
grew more golden to the spring, as the shiny bud-cases burst, and the
leaves showed in delicate wrinkled greens and reds, as the birds came
back in coveys and battalions, fluttering and piping through the sunny
wonderland of the woods, and still neither Dick nor his dark-faced
tempter reappeared,