"So that is why you wanted to keep me out?" said Ralph, very low.
"You are a white man," murmured Nahnya. "St. Jean and I have sworn to keep the children from the white men."
Ralph was moved to the bottom of his soul. "Nahnya," he said in a low, shaken voice, "in all my life before I never made an oath. Hear me now. I swear to you by all I hold dear, by my honour, by my hope of heaven, that I will never do anything to bring unhappiness into this valley!"
"You mean good," she said. "I do not doubt you. But who can tell what will follow? I have a feeling of evil to come. Once I heard a wise man say: 'The white men are like a prairie fire and the red men are the grass. Who shall stop the fire from consuming the grass?'"
At a certain point in the telling of this tale Ralph's intuition had warned him that something was left out; this feeling pursued him to the end. "Nahnya," he said presently, "you told me you had been in Winnipeg."
Her eyes darted a startled, pained glance at him, and her head fell a little lower.
"Never mind if it's too painful," Ralph said quickly.
"Yes," she said, in the same dead, quiet voice, "I will tell you that, too. That part I have never told. Not to St. Jean Bateese."
After a while she went on: "When I couldn't get a job in Prince George any more it is not true that I come back to my mot'er's people right away. First I go see my father. When things get so bad I think maybe my father help me. My mother have tell me his name. I ask one and another and by and by I find out he live in Winnipeg. I have save a little money, and I go to Winnipeg on the railway. It is a big city.
"I have not been there at all before I learn my father is now a rich, great man, and the King has put a Sir before his name. Then I am scare to see him. I do nothing to see him. I get a job. I get many jobs. I can take care of myself better in such a big city.