"I know," she agreed, with a little sigh, "it is hard on you, and it will be harder still if the story of this should ever creep out of the wilderness to the country where you come from--wouldn't it?" and she looked at him very sharply, noting the swift color flush his face, as though she had read his thoughts. "Yes--so it's lucky, Max, that we haven't talked to others about that little conditional promise, isn't it? So it will be easier to forget, and no one need know." "You mean you think me the sort of fellow to break our engagement just because these fools have mixed you up with this horror?" he asked, angrily. "You've no right to think that of me; neither have you the right--in justice to me as well as yourself--to maintain this very suggestive manner about all things connected with the murder. Why can you not tell more clearly where your time was spent last evening? Why will you not tell where the ring came from? Why will you see me half-frantic over the whole miserable affair, when you could, I am sure, easily change it?" "Oh, Max, I don't want to worry you--indeed I don't! But--" and she smiled mirthlessly. "I told you once I was a 'hoodoo.' The people who like me are always sure to have trouble brewing for them. That is why I say you had better give me up, Max; for this is only the beginning." "Don't talk like that; it is folly," he said, in a sharp tone. "'Hoodoo!' Nonsense! When Overton and the others arrive, they will find a means of changing the ideas of these people, in spite of your reticence; and then maybe old Akkomi may find words, too. He sits outside the door as impassive as the clay image you gave me and bewitched me with." She smiled faintly, thinking of those days--how very long ago they seemed, yet it was this same summer. "I feel as if I had lived a long time since I played with that clay," she said, wistfully; "so many things have been made different for me." Then she arose and walked about the little room restlessly, while the eyes of Harris never left her. Into the other room she had not gone at all, for in it was the dead stranger. "When do you look for your uncle and Mr. Haydon?" she asked, at last, for the silences were hardest to endure. She would laugh, or argue, or ridicule--do anything rather than sit silent with questioning eyes upon her. She even grew to fancy that Harris must accuse her--he watched her so! "When do we look for them? Well, I don't dare let myself decide. I only hope they may have made a start back, and will meet the captain on his way. As to Dan--he had not so very much the start, and they ought to catch up with him, for there were the two Indian canoeists--the two best ones; and when they are racing over the water, with an object, they surely ought to make better time than he. I can't see that he had any very pressing reason for going at all." "He doesn't talk much about his reasons," she answered.