an is a weapon that's quick
to cut the hand of the user."

Little did I realize my part in the terrible fulfilment of that
prophecy.

"Look alive, lad! Where are y'r wits? What's that?" he cried, suddenly
pointing to the river bank.

Up from the cliff sprang a form as if by magic. It came leaping straight
to the fort gate.

"Some frightened half-breed wench," surmised the priest.

I saw it was a woman with a shawl over her head like a native.

"_Bon soir!_" said I after the manner of traders with Indian women; but
she rushed blindly on to the gate.

The fort was deserted. Suspicion of treachery flashed on me. How many
more half-breeds were beneath that cliff?

"Stop, huzzie!" I ordered, springing forward and catching her so tightly
by the wrist that she swung half-way round before she could check
herself. She wrenched vigorously to get free. "Stop! Be still, you
huzzie!"

"Be still--you what?" asked a low, amazed voice that broke in ripples
and froze my blood. A shawl fluttered to the ground, and there stood
before us the apparition of a marble face.

"The Little Statue!" I gasped in sheer horror at what I had done.

"The little--what?" asked the rippling voice, that sounded like cold
water flowing under ice, and a pair of eyes looked angrily down at the
hand with which I was still unconsciously gripping her arm.

"I'd thank you, Sir," she began, with a mock courtesy to the priest,
"I'd thank you, Sir, to call off your mastiff."

"Let her go, boy!" roared the priest with a hammering blow across my
forearm that brought me to my senses and convinced me she was no wraith.

Mastiff! That epithet stung to the quick. I flung her wrist from me as
if it had been hot coals. Now, a woman may tread upon a man--also stamp
upon him if she has a mind to--but she must trip it daintily. Otherwise
even a worm may turn against its tormentor. To have idolized that marble
creature by day and night, to have laid our votive offerings on its
shrine, to have hungered for the sound of a woman's lips for weeks, and
to hear those lips cuttingly call me a dog--were more than I could
stand.

"Ten thousand pardons, Mistress Sutherland!" I said with a pompous
stiffness which I intended should be mighty crushing. "But when ladies
deck themselves out as squaws and climb in and out of windows,"--that
was brutal of me; she had done it for Miriam and me--"and announce
themselves in unexpected ways, they need not hope to be recognized."