Young as she is, this Nanca of whom I have written so much to you, has, they tell me, had a most romantic history. With her beauty it was of course, inevitable. Men are fools. At eighteen, urged into proud revolt against her Seminole suitors by her father, who for all his singular way of life can not forget his white heritage, she married a young foreigner who came into the Glades hunting. He seems to have been utterly without ties and decided to live with the Indians in the manner of the Spaniard. A year or so later, a young artist imitator of Catlin's made his way to the Seminole village with a guide. He had been traveling about among the Indians of the reservations painting Indian types, and had heard of this old turbaned tribe buried in the Everglades. Nanca's beauty must have driven him quite mad, I think. At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner to divorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient when the marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild, reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simple Seminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, a tiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he tried to run away, and the Indians killed him. Red-winged Blackbird! Keela then was the child of the artist! The old Spaniard in his gruff and haughty way has been kind to Grant and me. He's not well--some obscure cardiac trouble from which he suffers at times most horribly. He has confided to me a singular secret. The young foreigner who divorced Nanca is the crown prince of some obscure little mountain kingdom called Houdania. His name is Theodomir. He had wild revolutionary notions, hated royalty and fled at the death of his father. But America and its boasted liberty had cankers and inequalities too, and heartsick, Theodomir roamed about until at length on a hunting trip he came into the village of the Seminoles. Here was the communistic organization of which this aristocratic young socialist had dreamed--tribal ownership of lands, cooeperative equality of men and women--no jails, no poor-houses, no bolts or bars or locks--honorable old age and perfect moral order without law. What wonder that he lingered? Now that he is divorced from Nanca he wanders about from tribe to tribe. I'd like to see him. * * * * * * Ann, I must write the truth. The face of this Spanish girl haunts me day and night. There is a madness in my blood. I wish you were here! I am tormented by terrible doubts and misgivings. If Dad were not so intolerant! * * * * * *