yards away, and in her eagerness and utter absorption in the light had evidently overlooked him.  He could see her face distinctly, her lips parted half in wonder, half with the breathless absorption of a devotee.  A faint sense of disappointment came over him.  It was not him she was watching, but the light!  As it swelled out over the darkening gray sand she turned as if to watch its effect around her, and caught sight of Pomfrey.  With a little startled cry—­the first she had uttered—­she darted away.  He did not follow.  A moment before, when he first saw her, an Indian salutation which he had learned from Jim had risen to his lips, but in the odd feeling which her fascination of the light had caused him he had not spoken.  He watched her bent figure scuttling away like some frightened animal, with a critical consciousness that she was really scarce human, and went back to the lighthouse.  He would not run after her again!  Yet that evening he continued to think of her, and recalled her voice, which struck him now as having been at once melodious and childlike, and wished he had at least spoken, and perhaps elicited a reply.

He did not, however, haunt the sweat-house near the river again.  Yet he still continued his lessons with Jim, and in this way, perhaps, although quite unpremeditatedly, enlisted a humble ally.  A week passed in which he had not alluded to her, when one morning, as he was returning from a row, Jim met him mysteriously on the beach.

“S’pose him come slow, slow,” said Jim gravely, airing his newly acquired English; “make no noise—­plenty catchee Indian maiden.”  The last epithet was the polite lexicon equivalent of squaw.

Pomfrey, not entirely satisfied in his mind, nevertheless softly followed the noiselessly gliding Jim to the lighthouse.  Here Jim cautiously opened the door, motioning Pomfrey to enter.

The base of the tower was composed of two living rooms, a storeroom and oil-tank.  As Pomfrey entered, Jim closed the door softly behind him.  The abrupt transition from the glare of the sands and sun to the semi-darkness of the storeroom at first prevented him from seeing anything, but he was instantly distracted by a scurrying flutter and wild beating of the walls, as of a caged bird.  In another moment he could make out the fair stranger, quivering with excitement, passionately dashing at the barred window, the walls, the locked door, and circling around the room in her desperate attempt to find an egress, like a captured seagull.  Amazed, mystified, indignant with Jim, himself, and even his unfortunate captive, Pomfrey called to her in Chinook to stop, and going to the door, flung it wide open.  She darted by him, raising her soft blue eyes for an instant in a swift, sidelong glance of half appeal, half-frightened admiration, and rushed out into the open.  But here, to his surprise, she did not run away.  On the contrary, she drew herself up with a dignity that seemed to