There was no heat, no upbraiding in his tone. After the first touch of satire underlying his recognition of her he spoke in an even, almost monotonous voice, puffing slowly at his long Indian pipe with the impassiveness of the red men themselves. Then a silence fell between them. The meeting, the conversation, seemed to have bridged over the weary, hopeless years of captivity of the one, the aimless and chequered wanderings of the other. By magic the Indian _teepe_, with its confusion of _parfleches_ and robes and cooking-pots and wicker-beds, seemed to have disappeared, and once more their minds were back among the Government House state and the garrison festivities of the island colony, and many a familiar, but long-forgotten, face and memory of other days. And now the once beautiful girl who had queened it there, the descendant of a good old line, was the weary, middle-aged wife of a Sioux chief, doomed to live and die among the red barbarians. Truly the whirligig of Fortune was executing a strange freak when it brought these two face to face thus. "I have, indeed, injured you," she said at length. "But I can yet make some amends?" He shook his head. "Listen," she went on. "I can do this. I can give you in writing a full and true statement of the whole affair. Then you can return home and clear yourself." "And to what end?" he answered. "Nothing on earth is to be gained by raking up old troubles already forgotten. Besides, you are forgetting; I am a prisoner here, and, candidly, have very small hope of ever knowing liberty again. My time is about run out. Do you know that from hour to hour I live in unceasing apprehension of treachery? Any moment may be my last. See, I have an old pistol here--only one shot. I am keeping it for myself, if necessary, for I will never figure at their hellish stake." She shuddered. "But," she urged, lowering her voice, and speaking quickly, "but what if I can help you to escape?" He looked up, a flash of hope in his eyes. Then he shook his head. "I'm afraid it can't be done. They would be certain to detect your agency in the matter, and then what would be _your_ fate?" "What, you can still make that a consideration!" she exclaimed in amazement. Then, suddenly she burst into a flood of tears. "Forgive me," she said, quickly recovering herself. "I am very foolish. But you are the first of my race I have conversed with for eight long years. The only white faces I have seen during that time have been those of wretched prisoners brought in for torture and outrage, or of horse thieves and border ruffians, more repulsive and villainous than those of the savages themselves." "I had no idea of your identity," he said, "until you came in here just now. Then I recognised you, for I never forget a face. I am not easily astonished, but I was then. If the subject is not painful I should be glad to know the circumstances of your being here at all." She laughed drearily.