he had eschewed his mother country, leaving England, when
he had been disinherited, for the wilderness of South Dakota, and had
become one of those stormy petrels which, in those days, were ever to be
found hovering about the territory set apart for the restless Indians.
Yes, and with his destruction of that kindly, simple letter his resolve
had been taken. He would have nothing at the hands of the man who had
ousted him.

It was not thoughts of his resolve that gave his face its look of
treacherous cunning now, but something else. Something which kept him
sitting on his door-step thinking, thinking, until the sun had set and the
twilight darkened into night. Something which, during that time, brought
cruel smiles to his lips, and made him glance round on either side at the
brush that marked the boundary of the Sioux camping ground.

Something which at last made him rise from his hard seat and fetch out his
saddle from within the hut. Then he brought his horse in from its
tethering ground, and saddled it, and rode off down to the ford, and on to
the tepee of old Big Wolf, the great chief, the master mind that planned
and carried out all the bloody atrocities of the Pine Ridge Indian
risings.

"_Au revoir_, eh?" this tall renegade muttered, as he dismounted before
the smoke-begrimed dwelling. "There's only we two, Landor; and your
precious wife and child, and they are--no, we haven't met yet." And he
became silent as he raised the hide door of the tepee, and, without
announcing himself, stepped within.

The dark, evil-smelling interior was lit only by the smouldering embers of
a small wood-fire in the centre of the great circle. Though it was summer
these red heritors of the land could not do without their fire at
night-time, any more than they could do without their skins and frowsy
blankets. Nevil Steyne glanced swiftly over the dimly outlined faces he
saw looming in the shadows. The scene was a familiar one to him, and each
face he beheld was familiar. The puffy, broad face of the great chief, the
fierce, aquiline features of the stripling who was sitting beside him, and
who was Big Wolf's fifteen-year-old son, and the dusky, delicate,
high-caste features of the old man's lovely daughter, Wanaha.

He saw all these and entered in silence, leaving his well-trained horse to
its own devices outside. He closed up the doorway behind him, and squatted
upon his haunches in their midst.

Big Wolf removed the long-stemmed