She sat opposite him while he ate, and he had the chance of observing her closely while his meal progressed.  It struck him that she was growing prettier each time that he looked at her, and he was more positive than ever that she was a stranger in the northland.  Again he told himself that she was not more than twenty.  Mentally he even went so far as to weigh her and would have gambled that she would not have tipped a scale five pounds one way or the other from a hundred and twenty.  Some time he might have seen the kind of violet-blue that was in her eyes, but he could not remember it.  She was lost—­utterly lost at this far-end of the earth.  She was no more a part of it than a crepe de chine ball dress or a bit of rose china.  And there she was, sitting opposite him, a bewitching mystery for him to solve.  And she wanted to be solved!  He could see it in her eyes, and in the little beating throb at her throat.  She was fighting, with him, to find a way; a way to tell him who she was, and why she was here, and what he must do for her.

Suddenly he thought of the golden snare.  That, after all, he believed to be the real key to the mystery.  He rose quickly from the table and drew the girl to the window.  At the far end of the corral they could see Bram tossing chunks of meat to the horde of beasts that surrounded him.  In a moment or two he had the satisfaction of seeing that his companion understood that he was directing her attention to the wolf-man and not the pack.  Then he began unbraiding her hair.  His fingers thrilled at the silken touch of it.  He felt his face flushing hot under his beard, and he knew that her eyes were on him wonderingly.  A small strand he divided into three parts and began weaving into a silken thread only a little larger than the wolf-man’s snare.  From, the woven tress he pointed to Bram and in an instant her face lighted up with understanding.

She answered him in pantomime.  Either she or Bram had cut the tress from her head that had gone into the making of the golden snare.  And not only one tress, but several.  There had been a number of golden snares.  She bowed her head and showed him where strands as large as her little finger had been clipped in several places.

Philip almost groaned.  She was telling him nothing new, except that there had been many snares instead of one.

He was on the point of speech when the look in her face held him silent.  Her eyes glowed with a sudden excitement—­a wild inspiration.  She held out her hands until they nearly touched his breast.

“Philip Raine—­Amerika!” she cried.

Then, pressing her hands to her own breast, she added eagerly: 

“Celie Armin—­Danmark!”

“Denmark!” exclaimed Philip.  “Is that it, little girl?  You’re from Denmark?  Denmark!”

She nodded.

“Kobenhavn—­Danmark!”

“Copenhagen, Denmark,” he translated for himself.  “Great Scott, Celie—­we’re talking!  Celie Armin, from Copenhagen, Denmark!  But how in Heaven’s name did you get here?” He pointed to the floor under their feet and embraced the four walls of the cabin in a wide gesture of his arms.  “How did you get here?”