and I had no wish to spy.

But when I went to her there was no letter in sight. I did not stop to
talk, but I wrapped her in the cloak that Onanguisse had given her, and
wound her still further with blankets. "You will be cool enough in a
few minutes," I assured her, and I made a nest for her in a thicket of
young pines. She obeyed me dumbly, but with a certain gentleness, a
sort of submission. As she gazed up at me with her brown face and
inscrutable eyes, my hands were not quite steady. Heretofore I had
felt her power; now I felt only her inexperience, her dependence.
Child, woman, sphinx! What should I do with her? I turned away. The
rain was upon us in earnest.

I looked for my crew. The men were curled under trees, but Singing
Arrow had used more craft. She had hidden herself under her light
canoe,--which she had first secured with pegs that it might not blow
away,--and she lay as compact and comfortable as a tree-housed grub. I
lifted the corner of the canoe and peered at her, whereat she giggled
happily, serene in the thought that I was wet while she was dry. She
was as restful to the brain as a frolicking puppy, and I shook my head
at her to hear her giggle again. I was about to wonder whether she had
ever known awe of anything, but just then the thunder, which had been
merely growling, barked out like a howitzer above us, and she covered
her head and screamed like any of her sex.

The thunder sent me back to the woman. I crept, wet as I was, into her
pine-needled hollow, and started to ask if she were afraid. But the
question died at sight of her. She was propped on her elbows, and had
parted the low boughs in front of her that she might look out at the
storm. She turned at sound of me, and the blood was in her cheeks as I
felt it in mine.

"Come," she cried with her motion.

I went and lay close beside her, peering, as she did, through the
trees. The world was all wind and red light and churning water. I
could feel her quick breathing.

"I can hear the spirit of the wilderness crying," she said to me. The
lightning played over her face and eyes, and they shone like flame.

I laid a hand on her wet blankets. "Has the rain soaked through?"

But she did not listen. The exultation in her look I have seen
sometimes in the face of a young priest; I have also seen it in a
savage dancer. It is all one. It is the leaping response of the soul
to the call of a great freedom. Storm was su