re said, his tones dominant and conveying
a hint of menace.

She arose with catlike ease and suddenness to her full height, her eyes
flashing, her nostrils quivering like a deer's.

"I was thy woman to be, Negore, but thou art a coward; the daughter of
Old Kinoos mates not with a coward!"

She silenced him with an imperious gesture as he strove to speak.

"Old Kinoos and I came among you from a strange land. Thy people took us
in by their fires and made us warm, nor asked whence or why we wandered.
It was their thought that Old Kinoos had lost the sight of his eyes from
age; nor did Old Kinoos say otherwise, nor did I, his daughter. Old
Kinoos is a brave man, but Old Kinoos was never a boaster. And now, when
I tell thee of how his blindness came to be, thou wilt know, beyond
question, that the daughter of Kinoos cannot mother the children of a
coward such as thou art, Negore."

Again she silenced the speech that rushed up to his tongue.

"Know, Negore, if journey be added unto journey of all thy journeyings
through this land, thou wouldst not come to the unknown Sitka on the
Great Salt Sea. In that place there be many Russian folk, and their rule
is harsh. And from Sitka, Old Kinoos, who was Young Kinoos in those
days, fled away with me, a babe in his arms, along the islands in the
midst of the sea. My mother dead tells the tale of his wrong; a Russian,
dead with a spear through breast and back, tells the tale of the
vengeance of Kinoos.

"But wherever we fled, and however far we fled, always did we find the
hated Russian folk. Kinoos was unafraid, but the sight of them was a
hurt to his eyes; so we fled on and on, through the seas and years, till
we came to the Great Fog Sea, Negore, of which thou hast heard, but which
thou hast never seen. We lived among many peoples, and I grew to be a
woman; but Kinoos, growing old, took to him no other woman, nor did I
take a man.

"At last we came to Pastolik, which is where the Yukon drowns itself in
the Great Fog Sea. Here we lived long, on the rim of the sea, among a
people by whom the Russians were well hated. But sometimes they came,
these Russians, in great ships, and made the people of Pastolik show them
the way through the islands uncountable of the many-mouthed Yukon. And
sometimes the men they took to show them the way never came back, till
the people became angry and planned a great plan.

"So, when there came a ship, Old Kinoos stepped forward and