“Perrot said that? Metaminens? All my life I have hungered to see Metaminens.” Her voice lingered on the name with swift tenderness. Then she put out her hand and took that of Crawford, and a smile touched her lips gloriously. “And now he is coming, and it is you who bring him to me! Ah, I was wrong to be angry against you.” Crawford was astonished and bewildered. Perrot had seen this woman thirty years ago, and again ten years afterward--yet the thing was impossible, rankly impossible! She herself implied that she had never seen Perrot! Looking into her eyes, he could think only of Perrot’s words: “I think she is a saint!” Upon him rushed the feeling that he was in touch with some deeply poignant mystery, that he was treading holy ground, that from enmity he had somehow won her to friendliness and confidence; and he was awed before her clear eyes. “I do not wonder,” he said slowly, “that men look up to you as a being apart!” She smiled slightly and loosened her grip of his hand. “And I do not wonder that men follow you gladly,” she returned. “But no, no! I am only a woman, and to protect myself I manage to rule the tribes as I have been taught. I love them, I help them, I bring common-sense and what I have learned of healing and spiritual aid to their help--that is all. Because they believe in me, they find the help they seek.” “But who, then, taught you?” Crawford could not check his words. “Who showed you this trail? Where did you come from, you who are no Indian but a white woman?” Her eyes widened a little. He saw that same hurt look come into them, that look of heartache and pain. “Ah, I do not know!” she said softly. “I do not know, my friend. There is only one who could tell me; and some day my mother said he would come to tell me--Metaminens! There, look on the other side of this crooked tree, this sacred tree which the tribes worship as holy--you will see who taught me.” Crawford obeyed her gesture, and rounded the bole of that great tree. There, carved in the bark, he saw a cross, and below this a little mound of grassy earth. His eyes were opened suddenly; a rush of emotion seized upon him, as he comprehended all that this girl did not comprehend. He understood that it was not she whom Sieur Nicholas Perrot had seen in past years, but another; now he remembered that veil which had dropped over Perrot’s words, that swift checking of too impulsive speech; and he knew that he had been given to understand something which must not pass his lips. He silently took the girl’s hand again and bowed over it, and as he touched his lips to her fingers, they tightened on his. It was between them a tacit exchange of sympathy, of friendliness---- A burst of shots sounded, and the Star Woman twisted about. “Oh! Come quickly.”