only those have who live close to the earth, and also near to the
heavens of their own gods. He sat down beside the forlorn chief, and in
the silence their souls spoke to each other. There swept into the veins
of the Romany ruler something of the immitigable sadness of the Indian
chief; and, with a sudden premonition that he also was come to the
sunset of his life, his big nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the
heavens, and his breast heaved.

In that hour the two men declared themselves to each other, and Gabriel
Druse told Tekewani all that he had hidden from the people of the
Sagalac, and was answered in kind. It seemed to them that they were as
brothers who were one and who had parted in ages long gone; and having
met were to part and disappear once more, beginning still another trail
in an endless reincarnation.

"Brother," said Tekewani, "it was while there was a bridge of land
between the continents at the North that we met. Again I see it. I
forgot it, but again I see. There was war, and you went upon one path
and I upon another, and we met no more under all the moons till now."

"'Dordi', so it was and at such a time," answered the Ry of Rys. "And
once more we will follow after the fire-flies which give no light to the
safe places but only lead farther into the night."

Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to himself, but presently he
said:

"We eat from the hands of those who have driven away the buffalo, the
deer, and the beaver; and the young bucks do naught to earn the joy of
women. They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat that chases
its mate over the places of death, till it comes upon her at last, and
calls in triumph over her as she kneels at his feet. So it is. Like tame
beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man leaves
his own camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps, so that
not even our own women are left to us."

It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for
Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling
at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds.

They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they
were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but
turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced
of good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in
the next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their cre