years! It cannot be."

"But it was."

She was the daughter of a mighty chief. Her blood was royal, and she
gloried in it. All the race-hatred in her nature roused, and, for the
moment only, she glowered upon the pale-faced youth before her, as if
he represented, in his small person, all the sins of his own people.

Then the paroxysm passed, and her nobler self triumphed. Sitting down
again, she sought to draw the boy back into her embrace, but he held
himself aloof, and would not. So she began to talk with him there,
with a simple wisdom and dignity that she had learned from nature
itself.

"Why should we be angry, one with another, my son? The Great Spirit is
our Father. No man comes into life nor leaves it by a chance. What the
Mighty One decrees, that it is befalls. Between His red-skinned
children and His pale-faced ones He has put an undying enmity. I have
not always so believed. I have hoped and pleaded for the peace which
should glorify the world, even as the sun is glorifying the wide land
outside of this dim cavern. But it is not so to be. Even as the chief,
the Black Partridge, said: there is a feud which can never be
overcome, for it is of the Great Spirit's own planting. He that made
us all permits it. Let us, then, in our small place, cease to fight
against the inevitable. We have made the compact. We will abide by it.
In a tiny corner of the beautiful world we three will live in
harmony. Let the rest go. Put away your anger against my people, as I
now put aside mine against yours. The Sun Maid is of both races, it
seems to me. She is our Bond, our Peace-maker, our Delight. Behold!
She wakes. Before her eyes, let no shadow of our mutual trouble fall.
I go outside to watch. If all seems well, we may ride home at
nightfall."

Save for the danger to her young charges, she would have done so even
then. Far superior though she had always been to them, her heart
yearned over the helpless women of her tribe whom she had left behind.

"But that cannot be. They were tied fast by their motherhood to the
homes wherein they may have perished, even as I am tied here by my
adopted ones. The beasts, too, are tied; but they, at least, may have
a moment's freedom."

So she loosed them, and guided them to the pool where they could
drink, and watched them curiously, to see if they would avail
themselves of the liberty she had thus offered. But they did not. They
quaffed the clear water, then tossed their velvet nost