--that was the same. How she knew it! Orion and Ashtaroth, and
Mars and the Pleiades, and the long trail of the Milky Way. As a little
child hanging in the trees, or sprawled beside a tepee, she had made
friends with them all, even as she learned and loved all the signs of
the earth beneath--the twist of a blade of grass, the portent in the cry
of a river-hen, the colour of a star, the smell of a wind. She had known
Nature then, now she knew men. And knowing them, and having suffered,
and sick at heart as she was, standing by this window in the dead of
night, the cry that shook her softly was not of her new life, but of the
old, primitive, child-like.

'Pasagathe, omarki kethose kolokani vorgantha pestorondikat Oni.'

"A spear hath pierced me, and the smart of the nettle is in my wound.
Maker of the soft night, bind my wounds with sleep, lest I cry out and
be a coward and unworthy."

Again and again, unconsciously, the words passed from her lips

'Vorganthe, pestorondikat Oni.'

At last she let down the blind, came to the bed, and once more gathered
her child in her arms with an infinite hunger. This love was hers--rich,
untrammelled, and so sacred. No matter what came, and she did not know
what would come, she had the child. There was a kind of ecstasy in
it, and she lay and trembled with the feeling, but at last fell into a
troubled sleep.

She waked suddenly to hear footsteps passing her door. She listened. One
footstep was heavier than the other--heavier and a little stumbling; she
recognised them, Frank and Richard. In that moment her heart hardened.
Frank Armour must tread a difficult road.

CHAPTER XI. UPON THE HIGHWAY

Frank visited the child in the morning, and was received with a casual
interest. Richard Joseph Armour was fastidious, was not to be won at the
grand gallop. Besides, he had just had a visit from his uncle, and the
good taste of that gay time was yet in his mouth. He did not resent the
embraces, but he did not respond to them, and he straightened himself
with relief when the assault was over. Some one was paying homage to
him, that was all he knew; but for his own satisfaction and pleasure
he preferred as yet his old comrades, Edward Lambert, Captain Vidall,
General Armour, and, above all, Richard. He only showed real interest at
the last, when he asked, as it were in compromise, if his father would
give him a sword. No one had ever talked to him of his father, and
he had no instinc