flannels and calicoes usually worn by the Californian tribes, was purely native, and of fringed deerskin, and consisted of a long, loose shirt and leggings worked with bright feathers and colored shells.  A necklace, also of shells and fancy pebbles, hung round her neck.  She seemed to be a fully developed woman, in spite of the girlishness of her flowing hair, and notwithstanding the shapeless length of her gaberdine-like garment, taller than the ordinary squaw.

Pomfrey saw all this in a single flash of perception, for the next instant she was gone, disappearing behind the sweat-house.  He ran after her, catching sight of her again, half doubled up, in the characteristic Indian trot, dodging around rocks and low bushes as she fled along the banks of the stream.  But for her distinguishing hair, she looked in her flight like an ordinary frightened squaw.  This, which gave a sense of unmanliness and ridicule to his own pursuit of her, with the fact that his hour of duty was drawing near and he was still far from the lighthouse, checked him in full career, and he turned regretfully away.  He had called after her at first, and she had not heeded him.  What he would have said to her he did not know.  He hastened home discomfited, even embarrassed—­yet excited to a degree he had not deemed possible in himself.

During the morning his thoughts were full of her.  Theory after theory for her strange existence there he examined and dismissed.  His first thought, that she was a white woman—­some settler’s wife—­masquerading in Indian garb, he abandoned when he saw her moving; no white woman could imitate that Indian trot, nor would remember to attempt it if she were frightened.  The idea that she was a captive white, held by the Indians, became ridiculous when he thought of the nearness of civilization and the peaceful, timid character of the “digger” tribes.  That she was some unfortunate demented creature who had escaped from her keeper and wandered into the wilderness, a glance at her clear, frank, intelligent, curious eyes had contradicted.  There was but one theory left—­the most sensible and practical one—­that she was the offspring of some white man and Indian squaw.  Yet this he found, oddly enough, the least palatable to his fancy.  And the few half-breeds he had seen were not at all like her.

The next morning he had recourse to his Indian retainer, “Jim.”  With infinite difficulty, protraction, and not a little embarrassment, he finally made him understand that he had seen a “white squaw” near the “sweat-house,” and that he wanted to know more about her.  With equal difficulty Jim finally recognized the fact of the existence of such a person, but immediately afterwards shook his head in an emphatic negation.  With greater difficulty and greater mortification Pomfrey presently ascertained that Jim’s negative referred to a supposed abduction of the woman which he understood that his employer seriously contemplated.  But