With a sweep of his authoritative arm he dismissed the few of his companions who had not already moved away among the trees, and we two were alone together. “I come as a friend,” I said, seeing that he hesitated. And the word was true; for I saw that whatever harm he mistakenly sought to accomplish, in his soul was the consciousness of justice, that fundamental balance between right and wrong, that proposition of law, which when native in the mind gives it dignity and attracts respect. This was no dabbler in aboriginal and nasty sorcery, but a kind of priest of retribution, a tribal demi-god who might perhaps some day be made constructive and not destructive, an instrument of the great Genius of America of which I have spoken in a former letter, the Weaver of Destiny who has our land in charge. We measured each other with the eyes, and I cast aside the veil that I had before drawn around my thoughts, that he might see me mind to mind and realize that I respected and to a degree understood him. “You have seen what you have seen,” he observed. “And you do not resent my presence?” “No.” The fresh odor of the pine grove was keen in my senses, and my new-found companion threw back his head with a splendid motion as if to drink it in. “Freedom is good,” he said, “and the land was ours.” So I perceived that by excusing himself and his associates he had perceived that I accused them. Then I knew that I could really commune with him mind to mind, and I was glad; for I ever seek to extend the range of my knowledge and to form acquaintance with those of sturdy will. “But the land is free to all the world,” I said, “to you and to me, and to those of both our races.” “We do not see it so,” was his reply. “But,” I insisted, “are we not now, you and I, enjoying it in freedom?” It is difficult to translate in words the rapid give and take of our thoughts, the pictures that flashed back and forth between us, as I strove with kindliness and will to make him understand that the welfare of his race did not call for the destruction of mine. I told him--and the idea was so new to him that, lacking words, I had to draw my story on the canvas of thought in the minutest detail--how the soul that leaves the earth for a time returns to it in another form. And I explained how hundreds upon hundreds of his people, and the most advanced among them, had already come back in material form to that America they had loved before, that they wore white bodies, and could only be distinguished from other white men by the keenness of their eyes, their gait, and certain peculiarities of speech and manner. He followed my story with astonished, almost painful, intensity; for he knew, with that inner knowledge which on this side of life is almost impossible to deceive, that I spoke honestly and believed that which I told him. “And do you not deceive yourself?” was his inevitable question.