d in turn touching
it with her red lips, "why, are you a thief, Vernoon? That ring was mine
and you have stolen it. How did you steal that ring?"

"I don't know," he answered, through Jeekie, "I found it on my finger.
I cannot understand how it came there. I understand nothing of all this
talk."

"Well, well, keep it, Vernoon, only give me that other ring of yours in
exchange."

"I cannot," he replied, colouring. "I promised to wear it always."

"Whom did you promise?" she asked with a flash of rage. "Was it a woman?
Nay, I see, it is a man's ring, and that is well, for otherwise I would
bring a curse on her, however far off she may be dwelling. Say no more
and forgive my anger. A vow is a vow--keep your ring. But where is that
one you used to wear in bygone days? I recall that it had a cross upon
it, not this star and figure of an eagle."

Now Alan remembered that his uncle owned such a ring with a cross upon
it, and was frightened, for how did this woman know these things?

"Jeekie," he said, "ask the Asika if I am mad, or if she is. How can
she know what I used to wear, seeing that I was never in this place till
yesterday, and certainly I have not met her anywhere else."

"She mean when you your reverend uncle," said Jeekie, wagging his great
head, "she think you identical man."

"What troubles you, Vernoon," the Asika asked softly, then added
anything but softly to Jeekie, "Translate, you dog, and be swift."

So Jeekie translated in a great hurry, telling her what Alan had said,
and adding on his own account that he, silly white man that he was,
could not understand how, as she was quite a young woman, she could have
seen him before she was born. If that were so, she would be old and ugly
now, not beautiful as she was.

"I never saw you before, and you never saw me, Lady, yet you talk as
though we had been friends," broke in Alan in his halting Asiki.

"So we were in the spirit, Vernoon. It was she who went before me who
loved that white man whose face was as your face is, but her ghost
lives on in me and tells me the tale. There have been many Asikas, for
thousands of years they have ruled in this land, yet but one spirit
belongs to them all; it is the string upon which the beads of their
lives are threaded. White man, I, whom you think young, know everything
back to the beginning of the world, back to the time when I was a monkey
woman sitting in those cedar trees, and if you wish, I can tell it you."