s voice that
there was more that he wished to say.

"Your mother, who is dead, was not of our blood, they tell me. Your
father took her from another tribe and they had brought her captive,
from the north of us, so that she is no kin of ours. Sometimes I think
that there must have run in her veins the blood of those seven
brothers and that, in you, their bold spirit lives again. There is no
one of your kind who loves the sea as you do, who has no shadow of a
fear of it. And you are first, in all my life, who has asked me what
lay beyond."

"I should like," said Nashola steadily, still watching the gray water
and the gleam of stars above it, "I should like to go and see."

"Often I have wondered," the man went on, his voice growing very
earnest, "whether you would not like to come to dwell with me, to
learn the lore that makes me a medicine man and to take my place when
I must go. I, who was taught by the wisest of us all, have waited long
to find some one worthy of that teaching, and able to hold the power
that I have. You can be a greater man than I, Nashola; not only your
whole tribe will do your bidding and hang upon your words, but the men
of our race all up and down the coast will revere you and talk of you
as the greatest sorcerer ever known. Will you come to my lodge, will
you learn from me, will you follow in my way?"

Nashola tried to speak, choked and tried again.

"I cannot do it," he said huskily.

"Why?"

There was a sharp note of wonder, hurt friendship, even of terror, in
the man's voice.

"The people of our village say you are not like other men," said the
boy. "They say you can call the friendly spirits of the forest and the
hostile gods of the sea, and that you have wisdom learned in another
world. But I, who am your friend, think it is not so. I love you
dearly, but I know you are a man as I am. I know the sea is only water
and that the forest is only trees. I--I do not believe."

He got to his feet, blind with misery, and went stumbling down the
hill. The warm September darkness was thick about him, but up on the
hill the starlight showed plainly the motionless figure sitting
beneath the oak tree, never turning to look after him, uttering no
sound of protest or reproach.

As September days passed into October, as the Seven Brothers rode
higher in the sky, strange tales, once again, began to come from the
south. More white men had been seen in their ships, sailing up and
down the coast, t