followed and persecuted?"

"I was so little at the beginning I do not know. If it was that in
his religion he was different,--or if he was trying to change in
the government the laws,--for we are not of Russia,--I know that when
he gave away his land, the other noblemen were very angry with him,
and at the court--where my father was sent by his people for
reasons--there was a prince,--I think it was about my mother he hated
my father so,--but for what--that I never heard. But he had my
father imprisoned, and there in the prison they--What was that
word,--hectored? Yes. In the prison they hectored him greatly--so
greatly that never more was he straight. It was very sad."

"I don't think we would say hectored, for that. I think we would say
tortured."

"Oh, yes. I see. To hector is of the mind, but torture is of the body.
It is that I mean--for they were very terrible to him. My mother was
there, and they made her look at it to bring him the more quickly to
tell for her sake what he would not for his own. I think when she
looks long before her at nothing, she is seeing again the tortures of
my father, and so she cries out in that terrible way. I think so."

"What were they trying to get out of him?"

Amalia looked up in his face with a puzzled expression for a moment.
"Get--out--of--him?" she asked.

"I mean, what did they want him to tell?"

"Ah, that I know not. It was never told. If they could find him, I
think they would try again to learn of him something which he only can
tell. I think if they could find my mother, they would now try to
learn from her what my father knew, but her lips are like the grave.
At that time he had told her nothing, but since then--when we were far
out in the wilderness--I do not know. I hope my mother will never be
found. Is it a very secret place to which we go?"

"I might call it that--yes. I've lived there for twenty years and no
white man has found me yet, until the young man, Harry King, was
pitched over the edge of eternity and only saved by a--well--a
chance--likely."

The young woman gazed at him wide-eyed, and drew in her breath. "You
saved him."

"If he obeyed me--I did."

"And all the twenty years were you alone?"

"I always had a horse."

"But for a companion--had you never one?"

"Never."

"Are you, too, a good man who has done a deed against the law of your
land?"

The big man looked off a moment, then down at her with a little smile
playing about his l