She began to walk, Waldo, his gun under his arm, beside her. She trod noiselessly and fast. Waldo could scarcely keep up with her. As they walked he often fell behind and noted how her swathing garments clung to a lithe, shapely back, neat waist and firm hips. Each time he hurried and caught up with her, he scanned her with intermittent glances, puzzled that her waist, so well-marked at the spine, showed no particular definition in front; that the outline of her from neck to knees, perfectly shapeless under her wrappings, was without any waistline or suggestion of firmness or undulation. Likewise he remarked the amused flicker in her eyes and the compressed line of her red, her too red lips. “How long were you in the mission school?” he inquired. “Four years,” she replied. “Are you a Christian?” he asked. “The Free-folk do not submit to baptism,” she stated simply, but with rather more of the droning growl between her words. He felt a queer shiver as he watched the scarcely moved lips through which the syllables edged their way. “But you are not veiled,” he could not resist saying. “The Free-folk,” she rejoined, “are never veiled.” “Then you are not a Mohammedan?” he ventured. “The Free-folk are not Moslems.” “Who are the Free-folk?” he blurted out incautiously. She shot one baleful glance at him. Waldo remembered that he had to do with an Asiatic. He recalled the three permitted questions. “What is your name?” he inquired. “Amina,” she told him. “That is a name from the ‘Arabian Nights’,” he hazarded. “From the foolish tales of the believers,” she sneered. “The Free-folk know nothing of such follies.” The unvarying shutness of her speaking lips, the drawly burr between the syllables, struck him all the more as her lips curled but did not open. “You utter your words in a strange way,” he said. “Your language is not mine,” she replied. “How is it that you learned my language at the mission school and are not a Christian?” “They teach all at the mission school,” she said, “and the maidens of the Free-folk are like the other maidens they teach, though the Free-folk when grown are not as town-dwellers are. Therefore they taught me as any townbred girl, not knowing me for what I am.” “They taught you well,” he commented. “I have the gift of tongues,” she uttered enigmatically, with an odd note of triumph burring the words through her unmoving lips. Waldo felt a horrid shudder all over him, not only at her uncanny words, but also from mere faintness. “Is it far to your home?” he breathed. “It is there,” she said, pointing to the doorway of a large tomb just before them.