But when, at length, the quiet of sleep had descended upon the village, once again she sought her father.  He, too, within the open doorway of his lodge, watched intently the distant ship.  Without surprise he saw his daughter enter and, as she knelt upon the blanket beside him, he stretched a hand and drew her close.

“It grows cold.  The wind is rising.  ’Twere best to wait inside.”  He spoke in the musical Indian tongue.  For a moment he stroked her hair in silence, then —

“What think’st thou by now of the English, Wildenai, my little wild rose?” he asked.

But the princess seemed not to have heard his question.

“My father,” she began after another short silence, “I have a favor to ask of thee.”

“And what may that be, my daughter?” he returned gravely.

But again the young girl made no answer and for many minutes they watched the tremulous paths of light in the wake of the vessel.

After a time he felt her hand tighten upon his arm.

“It is but the old boon over again, my father.”  Her voice was low as the sighing of the wind among the oak trees.  “I would be freed from my promise to wed with Don Cabrillo.”

An Indian is not given to caresses.  Much more used was Torquam’s hand to wield the war-club or the hatchet.  Yet it was with fingers gentle as any woman’s that he stroked the smooth black head at his knee.

“Doubtest thou then, my motherless one, the judgment of him who loves thee?” he asked.

“I doubt it not, my father,” answered his daughter.  “Yet would I not wed with the Spaniard,” she added stubbornly.

“The blue-eyed senor from England” — there was a hint of humor in his tone, — “he it is who steals thy fancy!  Is it not so, my Wildenai?”

Then, after a moment:  “Right well knowest thou my only wish is to make thee happy.”  Again his voice, though gentle, grew serious almost to sadness.  “No mere whim it is that counsels me to wed thee to Cabrillo.  “There is something — " He paused, continuing with effort, — “a reason I have never told thee why it seems most fitting.  Now I will tell thee.  That reason is because, because, my Wildenai, thou art Spanish born thyself.”

The princess drew a hasty breath.  In the darkness he felt rather than saw her startled eyes upon him.

“My father!” The exclamation, filled with pain as well as astonishment, touched him to the quick.  Tenderly he drew her to him.  Then briefly, as was the Indian way, yet with the pictured phrasing which caused each scene to spring into vivid life before the young girl’s eyes, he told her of the day, already more than eighteen years gone by, when, in the wake of a long midwinter storm, the first sailing vessel ever beheld by his people had fled for refuge to their bay; and of the little girl carefully brought to shore by her old nurse in the first boat to touch the beach.  A mere baby she was, too young to know aught of her misfortune, yet a princess