“Ala — ate, see!  Are they not good?” she asked triumphantly.

And so from day to day she ministered to him.  Many a time as he sat, listless and moody, within his hiding-place, a handful of wild strawberries, steeped in the warm sweetness of the hills, would be pushed beneath the leafy branches that concealed the door.  Sometimes she brought him bread baked from a curious kind of meal made of pounded seeds.

Once, too, when a sudden storm had chilled the air, she kindled a fire for him within a smaller cave, receding like a fire-place into the rocky wall opposite the opening.  It was a long and tedious process which the man watched curiously.  First, kneeling on the ground, she rubbed together two dry willow sticks until a little pile of dust had gathered.  Then, still stooping, she struck two flints together until at last a spark fell into the dust.  Some dry leaves were dropped upon the tiny blaze, then twigs, and lo, a fire!

In spite of himself the Englishman smiled, though a softer feeling shown in his eyes.  How beautiful and yet how childish she looked kneeling there with the anxious pucker between her brows.  Poor little princess, how very hard she worked to serve him!

“It takes a long time, Wildenai,” he observed, “dost thou try it often?”

“Never for myself,” she answered gravely.  “I have no need.  But I do it gladly for you.”  She smiled brightly back at him, then rose and moved swiftly to the doorway.  “Another thing I do for you today.  Wait!”

And when she returned a few minutes later she brought with her, carefully wrapped in cool green leaves, a fish freshly caught that morning.

“A brook trout, on my word, such as I have often taken in the streams at home!” exclaimed Lord Harold, amazed.

“I got it far up the canyon before the sun was risen,” she answered, delighted at his surprise.

This, having quickly dressed it, she wrapped again in leaves and placed under the hot ashes to bake, and it being, evidently, a feast out of the ordinary, a merry-making to which a third guest might be bidden, suddenly Wildenai left the cavern again to return this time with a tiny gray fox perched familiarly upon her shoulder.

“’Tis Onatoa, senor Englishman,” she announced, gently stroking the bushy tail of the little creature as it lay about her neck.

But from his vantage point above his rival, Onatoa merely sniffed disdainfully with his sharp black nose.  He looked far from friendly.

The princess laughed softly.

He does not know you yet,” she defended her pet.  “He will soon learn to love you, too.”

“I will catch fish with thee next time thou goest,” declared young Harold later as they ate together.  “There’s no reason I can see why I should stay mewed up forever in this cave.  I fear not Indians!  No, not even Torquam, thy father, himself.”

For an instant Wildenai seemed alarmed.  Then she laughed.