nt of koonti bread and proffered it to her companion. With
faultless courtesy Diane accepted and presently partook with healthy
relish of a supper of duck and sweet potatoes.

The silence of the Indian girl was utterly without constraint.

"I wonder," begged Diane impetuously, "if you'll tell me who Mic-co is?
I'm greatly interested. He taught you about Rome?"

Nodding, the Indian girl said in her quaint, deliberate English that
Mic-co was her white foster father. The Seminoles called him
Es-ta-chat-tee-mic-co--chief of the White Race. Most of them called
him simply Mic-co. He was a great and good medicine man of much wisdom
who dwelt upon a fertile chain of swamp islands in the Everglades. The
Indians loved him.

Still puzzled, Diane diffidently ventured a question or two, marveling
afresh at the girl's beauty and singular costume.

"I am of no race," said Keela sombrely. "My father was a white man; my
mother not all Indian; my grandfather--a Minorcan. Six moons I live
with my white foster father. And I live then as I wish--like the
daughter of white men. Six moons I dwell with the clan of my mother.
Such is my life since the old chief made the compact with Mic-co.
Come!" she added and led the way to the Indian wagon.

"When the night-winds call," she said wistfully, "I grow restless--for
I am happiest in the lodge of Mic-co. Then the old chief bids me
travel to the world of white men and sell." There was gentle pathos in
her mellow voice.

Pieces of ancient pottery, quaint bleached bits of skeleton, beads and
shells and trinkets of gold unearthed from the Florida sand mounds,
moccasins and baskets, koonti starch and plumes, such were the
picturesque wares which Keela peddled when the stir of her mingled
blood drove her forth from the camp of her forbears.

Diane bought generously, harnessed her saddle with clanking relics and
regretfully mounted her horse.

"Let me come again to-morrow!" she begged.

"Uncah!" granted the girl in Seminole and her great black eyes were
very friendly.

Looking back as she rode through the flat-woods, Diane marveled afresh.
It was a far cry indeed from the camp of a Seminole to the legends of
Rome.

But the primeval flavor of the night presently dissolved in the glare
of acetylenes from a long gray car standing motionless by the roadside
ahead. The climbing moon shone full upon the face of a bareheaded
motorist idly smoking a cigarette and waiting.

Diane rei