"Where did he find it?" Lance inquired.
"He found it far, far back," Reefe responded. But his tone was so vague, and his expression grew so introspective, that Lance half imagined that the old face was growing still older—immeasurably more ancient—as he gazed upon it, and that the speaker was removing himself, by some occult spell, into a distant past.
"You spoke of our people," he said, at length. "Did you mean your family?"
"Where we came from. Our people—over there," the herb doctor answered, pointing uncertainly to his right, in a direction, Lance noticed, which signified farther to the North, up the Sound.
"Yes, they always had that charm," Adela now said. "I don't know why. Who can tell? It all comes from the old story of the Indians and the white folks."
Her father appeared to have lapsed into a semi-trance, or to be dozing; but Adela looked aroused; her interest was kindled, and she was evidently prepared to be communicative.
"Oh, is there a story?" Jessie cried. "Why, I never heard it. Do tell us, Deely!"
Some judicious urging was required before the girl would speak; but, in the end, the inquisitive lovers succeeded in persuading her, and at last she narrated to them the legend of her "people," the substance of which shall here be given, though not precisely in her language.
A great many years ago—as many as there are buds on a tree—an old man dwelt in a wigwam beside the sweet waters, with his only child, a beautiful girl. They had come out of the sea together, no man could remember when; but, while the other people in the wigwams were dark and red, these were almost white. They had been so long in the sea that the foam of the waves, touching their faces, had made them so white. And the old man loved his daughter very much. They spoke a strange language together, but when others talked to them, they replied in the words that all understood.