“But how?  What did you kneel for?” He did not reply, but taking her hand in his continued to move slowly on through the underbrush, as if obeying some magnetic attraction.  “How did you find it?” again asked the half-awed girl, her voice unconsciously falling to a whisper.  Still silent, Low kept his rigid face and forward tread for twenty yards further; then he stopped and released the girl’s half-impatient hand.  “How did you find it?” she repeated sharply.

“With my ears and nose,” replied Low gravely.

“With your nose?”

“Yes; I smelt it.”

Still fresh with the memory of his picturesque attitude, the young man’s reply seemed to involve something more irritating to her feelings than even that absurd anticlimax.  She looked at him coldly and critically, and appeared to hesitate whether to proceed.  “Is it far?” she asked.

“Not more than ten minutes now, as I shall go.”

“And you won’t have to smell your way again?”

“No; it is quite plain now,” he answered seriously, the young girl’s sarcasm slipping harmlessly from his Indian stolidity.  “Don’t you smell it yourself?”

But Miss Nellie’s thin, cold nostrils refused to take that vulgar interest.

“Nor hear it?  Listen!”

“You forget I suffer the misfortune of having been brought up under a roof,” she replied coldly.

“That’s true,” repeated Low, in all seriousness; “it’s not your fault.  But do you know, I sometimes think I am peculiarly sensitive to water; I feel it miles away.  At night, though I may not see it or even know where it is, I am conscious of it.  It is company to me when I am alone, and I seem to hear it in my dreams.  There is no music as sweet to me as its song.  When you sang with me that day in church, I seemed to hear it ripple in your voice.  It says to me more than the birds do, more than the rarest plants I find.  It seems to live with me and for me.  It is my earliest recollection; I know it will be my last, for I shall die in its embrace.  Do you think, Nellie,” he continued, stopping short and gazing earnestly in her face—­“do you think that the chiefs knew this when they called me ’Sleeping Water’?”

To Miss Nellie’s several gifts I fear the gods had not added poetry.  A slight knowledge of English verse of a select character, unfortunately, did not assist her in the interpretation of the young man’s speech, nor relieve her from the momentary feeling that he was at times deficient in intellect.  She preferred, however, to take a personal view of the question, and expressed her sarcastic regret that she had not known before that she had been indebted to the great flume and ditch at Excelsior for the pleasure of his acquaintance.  This pert remark occasioned some explanation, which ended in the girl’s accepting a kiss in lieu of more logical argument.  Nevertheless, she was still conscious of an inward irritation—­always distinct from her singular