here the chiefs met and the
West paused to rest on its onward march. Something of the accents of the
voice that crooned to her then was in the woman's tones now.

"He offered it like a lump of sugar to a bird--I know. He didn't know that
you have great blood--yes, but it is true. My man's grandfather, he was of
the blood of the kings of England. My man had the proof. And for a
thousand years my people have been chiefs. There is no blood in all the
West like yours. My heart was heavy, and dark thoughts came to me, because
my man is gone, and the life is not my life, and I am only an Indian woman
from the Warais, and my heart goes out there always now. But some great
Medicine has been poured into my heart. As I stood at the door and saw you
lying there, I called to the Sun. 'O great Spirit,' I said, 'help me to
understand, for this girl is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and
Evil has come between us!' And the Sun Spirit poured the Medicine into my
spirit, and there is no cloud between us now. It has passed away, and I
see. Little white one, the white life is the only life, and I will live it
with you till a white man comes and gives you a white man's home. But not
John Alloway. Shall the crow nest with the oriole?"

As the woman spoke with slow, measured voice full of the cadences of a
heart revealing itself, the girl's breath at first seemed to stop, so
still she lay; then, as the true understanding of the words came to her,
she panted with excitement, her breast heaved, and the blood flushed her
face. When the slow voice ceased, and the room became still, she lay quiet
for a moment, letting the new thing find secure lodgment in her thought;
then, suddenly, she raised herself and threw her arms round her mother in
a passion of affection.

"Lalika! O mother Lalika!" she said, tenderly, and kissed her again and
again. Not since she was a little girl, long before they left the Warais,
had she called her mother by her Indian name, which her father had
humorously taught her to do in those far-off happy days by the beautiful,
singing river and the exquisite woods, when, with a bow and arrow, she had
ranged, a young Diana who slew only with love.

"Lalika, mother Lalika, it is like the old, old times," she added, softly.
"Ah, it does not matter now, for you understand!"

"I do not understand altogether," murmured the Indian woman, gently. "I am
not white, and there is a different way of thinking; but I will hold your