the words hieroglyphed: "It is a confession!--and
paltry, lame, and thin."

'I sat drawing in my breath in faint gasps--and waiting. Presently, I
heard the solemn words I knew were coming; and each word, as it came,
was a knife in my heart:

'"It is the command of the court that the accused be subjected to the
trial by water."

'Oh, curses be upon the head of him who brought "trial by water" to our
land! It came, generations ago, from some far country that lies none
knows where. Before that our fathers used augury and other unsure
methods of trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with
their lives sometimes; but it is not so with trial by water, which is
an invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant savages are. By it the
innocent are proved innocent, without doubt or question, for they drown;
and the guilty are proven guilty with the same certainty, for they
do not drown. My heart was breaking in my bosom, for I said, "He is
innocent, and he will go down under the waves and I shall never see him
more."

'I never left his side after that. I mourned in his arms all the
precious hours, and he poured out the deep stream of his love upon me,
and oh, I was so miserable and so happy! At last, they tore him from
me, and I followed sobbing after them, and saw them fling him into the
sea--then I covered my face with my hands. Agony? Oh, I know the deepest
deeps of that word!

'The next moment the people burst into a shout of malicious joy, and
I took away my hands, startled. Oh, bitter sight--he was swimming! My
heart turned instantly to stone, to ice. I said, "He was guilty, and he
lied to me!" I turned my back in scorn and went my way homeward.

'They took him far out to sea and set him on an iceberg that was
drifting southward in the great waters. Then my family came home, and my
father said to me:

'"Your thief sent his dying message to you, saying, 'Tell her I am
innocent, and that all the days and all the hours and all the minutes
while I starve and perish I shall love her and think of her and bless
the day that gave me sight of her sweet face.'" Quite pretty, even
poetical!

'I said, "He is dirt--let me never hear mention of him again." And oh,
to think--he was innocent all the time!

'Nine months--nine dull, sad months--went by, and at last came the day
of the Great Annual Sacrifice, when all the maidens of the tribe wash
their faces and comb their hair. With the first sweep of my comb
out