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some shy creature of the forest, then sprang eagerly forward to meet him.

"I knew you were coming!" she cried rapturously. "I felt your approach long before I heard your foot steps."

"How is that?" said Cecil, holding her hands and looking down into her radiant eyes. Something of the wild Indian mysticism flashed in them as she replied :

"I cannot tell; I knew it! my spirit heard your steps long before my ears could catch the sound. But oh!" she cried in sudden transition, her face darkening, her eyes growing large and pathetic, "why did you not come yesterday? I so longed for you and you did not come. It seemed as if the day would never end. I thought that perhaps the Indians had killed you; I thought it might be that I should never see you again; and all the world grew dark as night, I felt so terribly alone. Promise me you will never stay away so long again!"

"Never!" exclaimed Cecil, on the impulse of the moment. An instant later he would have given the world to have recalled the word.

"I am so glad!" she cried, clapping her hands in girlish delight; and he could not pain her by an explanation.

"After a while I will tell her how impossible it is for me to come again," he thought. "I cannot tell her now." And he seized upon every word and look of the lovely unconscious girl, with a hunger of heart born of eight years starvation.

"Now you must come with me to my lodge; you are my guest, and I shall entertain you. I want you to look at