look at her, and touched
her hot forehead tenderly.

"Poor little girl! poor 'Tana!" he said, and turned the covering from
about her chin where she had pulled it. He had seen her last so saucy, so
defiant of all his wishes, and the change to this utter helplessness
brought the quick tears to his eyes. He clasped her hand softly and turned
away.

"It is too dark in here to see anything very clearly," said the stranger,
who bent toward her slightly, with his hat in his hand.

Then Akkomi, who had intercepted the light somewhat, moved from the foot
of the bed to the stranger's side, and a little sunshine rifted through
the small doorway and outlined more clearly the girl's face on the
pillow.

The stranger, who was quite close to her, uttered a sudden gasping cry as
he saw her face more clearly, and drew back from the bed.

The dark hand of the Indian caught his white wrist and held him, while
with the other hand he pointed to the curls of reddish brown clustering
around the girl's pale forehead, and from them to the curls on Mr.
Haydon's own bared head. They were not so luxuriant as those of the girl,
but they were of the same character, almost the same color, and the vague
resemblance to something familiar by which Overton had been impressed was
at once located by the old Indian the moment the stranger lifted the hat
from his head.

"Sick, maybe die," said Akkomi, in a voice that was almost a whisper--"die
away from her people, away from the blood that is as her blood," and he
pointed to the blue veins on the white man's wrist.

With an exclamation of fear and anger, Mr. Haydon flung off the Indian's
hand.

Lyster, scarce hearing the words spoken, simply thought the old fellow was
drunk, and was about to interfere, when the girl, as though touched by the
contest above her, turned mutteringly on the pillow and opened her
unconscious eyes on the face of the stranger.

"See!" said the Indian. "She looks at you."

"Ah! Great God!" muttered the other and staggered back out of the range of
the wide-open eyes.

Lyster, puzzled, astonished, came forward to question his Eastern friend,
who pushed past him rudely, blindly, and made his way out into the
sunshine.

Akkomi looked after him with a gratified expression on his dark, wrinkled
old face, and bending over the girl, he muttered in a soothing way words
in the Indian tongue, as though to quiet her restlessness with Indian
witchery.

CHAPTER XV.

SOME