But Nevil's thoughts were not with her, and his smile was inspired by his thoughts. The man's mean, narrow face had nothing pleasant in it as he smiled. Some faces are like this. He was a degenerate of the worst type; for he was a man who had slowly receded from a life of refinement, and mental retrogression finds painful expression on such a face. A ruffian from birth bears less outward trace, for his type is natural to him. Wanaha always humored her husband's moods, in which, perhaps, she made a grave error. She held silent until he chose to speak. And when she turned at last to arrange the supper table, he was so moved. The smile had died out of his thin face, and his pale blue eyes wore a look of anxious perplexity when he summoned her attention. "Wana," he said, as though rousing himself from a long worrying thought, "we must do something, my Wana. And--I hardly know what." The black eyes looked straight into the blue ones, and the latter shifted to the table on which the woman's loving hands had carefully set the necessaries for supper. "Tell me," she said simply, "you who are clever--maybe I help." "That's just it, my Wana. I believe you can. You have a keen brain. You always help me." Nevil relapsed into silence, and bit nervously at his thumb nail. The woman waited with the stoical patience of her race. But she was all interest, for had not the man appealed to her for help? "It's your brother," Nevil said at last. "Your brother, and the white girl at the farm, Rosebud." "Yes." The dark eyes suddenly lit. Here was a matter which lay very near her heart. She had thought so much about it. She had even dared at other times to speak to her husband on the subject, and advise him. Now he came to her. "Yes," the man went on, still with that look of perplexity in his shifty eyes; "perhaps I have been wrong. You have told me that I was. But, you see, I looked on your brother as a child almost. And if I let him talk of Rosebud, it was, as I once told you, because he is headstrong. But now he has gone far enough--too far. It must be stopped. The man is getting out of hand. He means to have her." Wanaha's eyes dilated. Here indeed was a terrible prospect. She knew her brother as only a woman can know a man. She had not noted the melodramatic manner in which her husband had broken off. "You say well. It must be stop. Tell your Wana your thought. We will pow-wow like great chiefs." "Well, that's just it," Nevil went on, rising and drawing up to the table. "I can't see my way clearly. We can't stop him in whatever he intends. He's got some wild scheme in his head, I know; and I can't persuade him. He's obstinate as a mule." "It is so. Little Black Fox is fierce. He never listen. No. But you think much. You, who are clever more than all the wise men of my race."