it, and sat down, smoking in silence. Armour
waited; but, seeing that the other was not yet moved to talk, he turned
to his letter again. After a time, Eye-of-the-Moon said gravely, getting
to his feet: "Brother!"

Armour looked up, then rose also. The Indian bowed to him courteously,
then sat down again. Armour threw a leg over a corner of the table and
waited.

"Brother," said the Indian presently, "you are of the great race that
conquers us. You come and take our land and our game, and we at last
have to beg of you for food and shelter. Then you take our daughters,
and we know not where they go. They are gone like the down from the
thistle. We see them not, but you remain. And men say evil things. There
are bad words abroad. Brother, what have you done with my daughter?"

Had the Indian come and stormed, begged money of him, sponged on him,
or abused him, he had taken it very calmly--he would, in fact, have
been superior. But there was dignity in the chief's manner; there
was solemnity in his speech; his voice conveyed resoluteness and
earnestness, which the stoic calm of his face might not have suggested;
and Armour felt that he had no advantage at all. Besides, Armour had a
conscience, though he had played some rare tricks with it of late, and
it needed more hardihood than he possessed to face this old man down.
And why face him down? Lali was his daughter, blood of his blood, the
chieftainess of one branch of his people, honoured at least among these
poor savages, and the old man had a right to ask, as asked another more
famous, "Where is my daughter?"

His hands in his pockets, Armour sat silent for a minute, eyeing
his boot, as he swung his leg to and fro. Presently he said:
"Eye-of-the-Moon, I don't think I can talk as poetically as you, even in
my own language, and I shall not try. But I should like to ask you this:
Do you believe any harm has come to your daughter--to my wife?"

The old Indian forgot to blow the tobacco-smoke from his mouth, and,
as he sat debating, lips slightly apart, it came leaking out in little
trailing clouds and gave a strange appearance to his iron-featured face.
He looked steadily at Armour, and said: "You are of those who rule in
your land,"--here Armour protested,--"you have much gold to buy and
sell. I am a chief," he drew himself up,--"I am poor: we speak with the
straight tongue; it is cowards who lie. Speak deep as from the heart, my
brother, and tell me where my daughter