ing were not sufficient. He became surrounded by the
ghosts of yesterdays; and at length he gave up striving with them, and
let them storm upon him, until a line of pain cut deeply across his
forehead, and bitterly and unconsciously he cried aloud,--"Hester, ah,
Hester!"

But having spoken, the spell was broken, and he was aware of the beat
of hoofs beside him, and Shangi the Indian looking at him with a half
smile. Something in the look thrilled him; it was fantastic, masterful.
He wondered that he had not noticed this singular influence before.
After all, he was only a savage with cleaner buckskin than his race
usually wore. Yet that glow, that power in the face--was he Piegan,
Blackfoot, Cree, Blood? Whatever he was, this man had heard the words
which broke so painfully from him.

He saw the Indian frame her name upon his lips, and then came the words,
"Hester--Hester Orval!"

He turned sternly, and said, "Who are you? What do you know of Hester
Orval?"

The Indian shook his head gravely, and replied, "You spoke her name, my
brother."

"I spoke one word of her name. You have spoken two."

"One does not know what one speaks. There are words which are as sounds,
and words which are as feelings. Those come to the brain through the
ear; these to the soul through sign, which is more than sound. The
Indian hath knowledge, even as the white man; and because his heart is
open, the trees whisper to him; he reads the language of the grass and
the wind, and is taught by the song of the bird, the screech of the
hawk, the bark of the fox. And so he comes to know the heart of the
man who hath sickness, and calls upon someone, even though it be a weak
woman, to cure his sickness; who is bowed low as beside a grave, and
would stand upright. Are not my words wise? As the thoughts of a child
that dreams, as the face of the blind, the eye of the beast, or the
anxious hand of the poor, are they not simple, and to be understood?"

Just Trafford made no reply. But behind, Pierre was singing in the
plaintive measure of a chant:

"A hunter rideth the herd abreast,
The Scarlet Hunter from out of the West,
Whose arrows with points of flame are drest,
Who loveth the beast of the field the best,
The child and the young bird out of the nest,
They ride to the hunt no more, no more!"

They travelled beyond all bounds of civilisation; beyond the
northernmost Indian villages, until the feat