Her eyes grew sober enough as they rested inquiringly on my face, for all that they still held an irritatingly roguish twinkle in their depths.

“It was the expression upon your face which so amused me,” she explained.  “I am not indifferent to all that your coming means, nor to the horrors this camp has witnessed.  More than that, you appear to me like one risen from the dead.  I have truly mourned for you, John Wayland.  I lost all power, all desire tor resistance, when I saw you stricken from your horse, and often since my eyes have been moist in thoughts of you.  No doubt ’t was but the sudden reaction from seeing you again alive that made me so forgetful of these dread surroundings as to smile.  I beg you to forgive me; it was not heartlessness, but merely the way of a thoughtless girl, Monsieur.”

It had been impossible for me to resist her cajolery from the beginning; and now I read in her eyes the truth of all she spoke.

“There is naught for you to forgive, Mademoiselle,” I answered, drawing myself wholly within the tepee and resting on my knees.  “But are you quite alone here, and without guards?”

“For the present, yes.  Little Sauk has been gone from the camp for some hours.  They watch me with some care at night,—­yet of what use can their guarding be?  If I should get without the lodge, escape would be hopeless for a girl like me.  But now tell me about yourself.  Are you also prisoner to the Indians?  Surely I saw you struck down in that mad melee.  ’Twas then I lost heart, and gave up every hope of rescue.”

“No, I am not a prisoner, Mademoiselle.  I fell, stunned by a blow dealt me from behind, but was saved from capture by the falling of my horse across my body.  I am here now of my own will, and for no other purpose than to save you.”

“To save me!  Oh, Monsieur! it would make me blush really to think I ranked so high in your esteem.  Was it not rather that other girl you came to seek,—­the one you sought so far through the wilderness, only to find hidden in this encampment of savages?  Tell me, Monsieur, was she by any chance of fate the heroine who last night plucked Captain de Croix from the flames of torture?”

“You know, then, of his danger and deliverance?” I said, not feeling eager to answer her query. “’T was a most brave and womanly act.”

“A strange exercise of power, indeed, Monsieur,” and she looked directly into my eyes; “and the savages tell me she claimed to have knowledge of him.”

Surely I had a right to relate the whole story of De Croix’s confession; yet somehow I did not deem it the manly thing to do.  Rather, I would let her learn the truth in God’s own time, and from other lips than mine.  Perchance she would respect me more in the end for keeping silence now.  But in this decision I failed to consider that hasty words of explanation might naturally lead her to believe the existing friendship mine instead of his.