With these parting words, he waived adieu, and, turning, sought the apartment of Lady Geraldine.

The door was opened, as before, by the little Indian girl, Neebin, who, as soon as she had admitted the Knight, ran to the side of the lady, and, falling on her knees, began with curious eyes to examine a book which the lady held in her lap.

The Knight looked affectionately at the child, and, approaching her, placed his hand upon the raven hair that fell low upon the shoulders, and, caressing the bent head, said gently: 

“Good little Neebin!  Has she learned all about the pretty pictures?”

The girl turned up to him her bright eyes, and, in better English than that commonly used by the Indians, and even with a pronunciation that approached correctness, replied: 

“No—­Neebin knows very little now, but the lady says the book will talk to her by and by.”

It was one of those illuminated missals on which, for want of other occupation, and sometimes with a feeling of superstitious piety, the monks spent incredible pains, and often a capricious and wonderful ingenuity, which the half-reclaimed little savage was looking at.  As if unable to satisfy her curiosity fast enough, she turned the leaves over with childish impatience, uttering now and then a cry of delight as she beheld the figure of a bird or of a quadruped, while her eyes would sadden as they fell upon the mournful face of the crucified Saviour, whose image was delineated in several parts of the book.

“She knows all her letters,” said Sister Celestina, whose true character as a Catholic and a nun the reader has long ago divined “and I permit her, as a reward, to look at the missal whenever she has been diligent.”

“Your task is something like taming a young hawk,” said the Knight.

“Neebin is not a hawk!” exclaimed the child.  “Hawks do not wear clothes, nor yellow chains, nor can they say Pater noster and Ave Maria.”

“No,” said the lady; “nor have they a soul to be saved, like Neebin.”

“What is a soul?” inquired the girl.

Tears dimmed the eyes of Sister Celestina at the question, and, before she could reply, the Knight said: 

“Thou hast asked a question, Neebin, which puzzles wiser heads; but it is something which lives when the body becomes dust.”

“O, yes,” said the child.  “I have heard the lady (for so she had been taught to call Sister Celestina) talk about it.  How does it look?”

“There thou askest a question beyond the boundaries of knowledge.  No one has returned from the grave to answer it,” said the Knight.

“I know,” said the child; “my mother told me.  It is Neebin’s soul which looks at her when she bends over a clear spring; it lives in the water.”

“I have tried,” said the lady, “to impart the idea, but it seems only to begin to dawn upon her mind.  I trust, by Heaven’s grace, (crossing herself,) it will grow and bear fruit to the glory of sweet Jesus’s name.”