past
another room--of which she caught a fleeting glance--and into a third,
both of which dimmed the brave show of the entrance hall. And to her
eyes the great house seemed to hold out the promise of endless similar
rooms. There was such length and breadth to them, and the ceilings were
so far away! For the first time since her advent into the white man's
civilization, a feeling of awe laid hold of her. Neil, her Neil, lived
in this house, breathed the air of it, and lay down at night and slept!
It was beautiful, all this that she saw, and it pleased her; but she
felt, also, the wisdom and mastery behind. It was the concrete
expression of power in terms of beauty, and it was the power that she
unerringly divined.

And then came a woman, queenly tall, crowned with a glory of hair that
was like a golden sun. She seemed to come toward Jees Uck as a ripple of
music across still water; her sweeping garment itself a song, her body
playing rhythmically beneath. Jees Uck herself was a man compeller.
There were Oche Ish and Imego and Hah Yo and Wy Nooch, to say nothing of
Neil Bonner and John Thompson and other white men that had looked upon
her and felt her power. But she gazed upon the wide blue eyes and rose-
white skin of this woman that advanced to meet her, and she measured her
with woman's eyes looking through man's eyes; and as a man compeller she
felt herself diminish and grow insignificant before this radiant and
flashing creature.

"You wish to see my husband?" the woman asked; and Jees Uck gasped at the
liquid silver of a voice that had never sounded harsh cries at snarling
wolf-dogs, nor moulded itself to a guttural speech, nor toughened in
storm and frost and camp smoke.

"No," Jees Uck answered slowly and gropingly, in order that she might do
justice to her English. "I come to see Neil Bonner."

"He is my husband," the woman laughed.

Then it was true! John Thompson had not lied that bleak February day,
when she laughed pridefully and shut the door in his face. As once she
had thrown Amos Pentley across her knee and ripped her knife into the
air, so now she felt impelled to spring upon this woman and bear her back
and down, and tear the life out of her fair body. But Jees Uck was
thinking quickly and gave no sign, and Kitty Bonner little dreamed how
intimately she had for an instant been related with sudden death.

Jees Uck nodded her head that she understood, and Kitty Bonner explained
that Nei