“Oh, why did that man have to come here!” murmured Colina.

They were silent for a while, Colina looking on the ground, and Strange watching Colina with his peculiar limpid, candid eyes, which, when one looked deep enough, were not candid at all.

He finally looked away from her.

“There is something I want to say,” he began an low tones.  “Your father—­he shall be my special care to-night.  They can strike at him—­only through me.”

“Ah, you’re so good to me!” murmured Colina.

“Do not thank me,” he said quickly.  “Remember I owe him everything.  All I am.  All I have I would gladly—­gladly—­I sound melodramatic, don’t I. But I don’t often inflict this on you.  You know what I mean.  If I could save him!”

Colina impulsively seized his hand.  Tears of gratitude sprang to her eyes.  “I will thank you!” she cried.  “You’re the best friend I have in the world!”

“And even if I owed him nothing,” Strange went on, not looking at her, “he would still be your father!”

An hour before Colina would have crushed him.  But it came at an emotional moment.  She was blind to his color then.

“I will never, never forget this,” she said.

He respectfully lifted her hands to his lips.

The under devil whose especial business it is to preside over fine acting must have rubbed his hands gleefully at the sight of his dark-skinned protege’s aptitude.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE “TEA DANCE.”

When Ambrose and Simon Grampierre arrived at the tea-dance they found present as many of the Kakisas of both sexes as could be wedged within Jack Mackenzie’s shack.

All around the room they were pressed in tiers, the first line squatting, the second kneeling, the third standing, and others behind, perched on chairs, beds and tables, that all might have a clear view of the floor.

The cook-stove occupied the center of the room, and around it a narrow space had been left for the dancers.  The air was suffocating to white lungs, what with human emanations combined with the thick fumes of kinnikinic.

Watusk, still sporting the frock coat and the finger-rings, had improved his costume by the addition of a battered silk hat with a chaplet of red paper roses around the brim.

He squatted on the floor in the center of the back wall, and places had been left at his right and left for Ambrose and Simon.  He was disposed to be gracious and jocular to-night.

For very slight cause, or for none at all he laughed until he shook all over.  This was his way of appearing at his ease.

As they took their places Ambrose was struck by the pretty, wistful face of a girl who knelt on the floor behind Watusk.  It had a fine quality that distinguished it sharply from the stolid flat countenances of her sisters.

It was more than pretty; it was tragically beautiful, though she was little more than a child.  What made it especially significant to Ambrose was the fact that the girl’s sad eyes instantaneously singled him out when he entered.