"Ay, indeed you told me you sought a young girl, and your words led me to think at first it must be Josette, and later still the Indian missionary. But not once did you breathe the name of the girl in my ears. The dwellers at Dearborn were neither so many nor so strange to me that I could not have aided you in your search." "You knew this Elsa Matherson?" "I am not so sure of that, Master Wayland," she returned gravely, her eyes wandering into the night. "Once I thought I did, but she has changed so greatly in the last few days that I am hardly sure. A young girl's life is often filled with mystery, and there are happenings that turn girlhood to womanhood in a single hour. Love has power to change the nature as by magic, and sorrow also has a like rare gift. Do you still greatly wish to find this Elsa Matherson?" "To find her?" and I gazed about me incredulously into those flitting shadows where the waves raced by. "Ay, for I have dreamed of her as of a lost sister, and it will sadly grieve those at home to have me return thus empty-handed. Yet the thought is foolishness, Mademoiselle, and I understand not why you should mock me so." She drew closer, in the gentle caressing way she had, and found my disengaged hand, her sweet face held upward so that I could mark every changing expression. "Never in my useless life was I farther removed from any spirit of mockery," she insisted, soberly; "for never before have I seen the presence of God so clearly manifest in His mysterious guidance of men. You, who sought after poor Elsa Matherson in this wilderness, looking perchance for a helpless orphan child, have been led to pluck me in safety out from savage hands, and yet never once dreamed that in doing so you only fulfilled your earlier mission." I stared at her, grasping with difficulty the full significance of her speech. "Your words puzzle me." "Nay, they need not," and I caught the sudden glitter of tears on her lashes; "for I am Elsa Matherson." "You? you?" and I crushed her soft hand within my fingers, as I peered forward at the quickly lowered face. "Why, you are French, Mademoiselle, and of a different name!" She glanced up now into my puzzled face, a bit shyly, yet with some of the old roguishness visible in her eyes. "My mother was indeed French, but my father was an American soldier," she said rapidly, as if eager to have the explanation ended. "You never asked my name, save that one night when we first met amid the sand, and then I gave you only that by which I have been most widely known. None except my father ever called me Elsa; to all others I was always Toinette. But I am Roger Matherson's only child." It was clear enough now, and the deception had been entirely my own, rendered possible by strange chances of omission, by rare negligence of speech--aided by my earlier impression that she whom I sought was a mere child. "And 'twas Sister Celeste who told you whom I sought?" I asked, for lack of courage to say more.