ve hundred horses. Your man is
going to his own people. Let him go. He is no man. It is four years, and
still there are but two in your lodge. How!"

He swung on his heel with a chuckle in his throat, for he thought he had
said a good thing, and that in truth he was worth twenty white men. His
quick ear caught a movement behind him, however, and he saw the girl
spring from the lodge door, something flashing from her belt. But now
the mother's arms were round her, with cries of protest, and Breaking
Rock, with another laugh, slipped away swiftly toward the river.

"That is good," he muttered. "She will kill him perhaps, when she goes
to him. She will go, but he will not stay. I have heard."

As he disappeared among the trees Mitiahwe disengaged herself from her
mother's arms, went slowly back into the lodge, and sat down on the
great couch where, for so many moons, she had lain with her man beside
her.

Her mother watched her closely, though she moved about doing little
things. She was trying to think what she would have done if such a thing
had happened to her, if her man had been going to leave her. She assumed
that Dingan would leave Mitiahwe, for he would hear the voices of his
people calling far away, even as the red man who went East into the
great cities heard the prairies and the mountains and the rivers and
his own people calling, and came back, and put off the clothes of
civilisation, and donned his buckskins again, and sat in the Medicine
Man's tent, and heard the spirits speak to him through the mist and
smoke of the sacred fire. When Swift Wing first gave her daughter to the
white man she foresaw the danger now at hand, but this was the tribute
of the lower race to the higher, and--who could tell! White men had left
their Indian wives, but had come back again, and for ever renounced
the life of their own nations, and become great chiefs, teaching
useful things to their adopted people, bringing up their children as
tribesmen--bringing up their children! There it was, the thing which
called them back, the bright-eyed children with the colour of the brown
prairie in their faces, and their brains so sharp and strong. But here
was no child to call Dingan back, only the eloquent, brave, sweet face
of Mitiahwe.... If he went! Would he go? Was he going? And now that
Mitiahwe had been told that he would go, what would she do? In her belt
was--but, no, that would be worse than all, and she would lose Mitiahwe,
her