“And my eyes made tears; for many forgotten sorrows came back to me at once, and I felt a great kindness for all things, which I could not understand.
“And when he dropped his arm and looked at me, his eyes threw soft, white fire into my breast, and then I knew the singing was not for me. Once when my woman was young and still in the lodge of her father, I looked upon her with such a look.
“So I gave the girl to the paleface; and for a time the singing box was still; for they made a silent music between them. And before the first frosts made the hills shiver, the palefaces who trade for furs came to our village, and the man went with them; and with him went the woman. No man can be deaf to the call of his kind; so he went. And now the woman shall speak, and you shall judge her deed.”
The old man sat down and rested his face in his hands. The young woman arose to her feet. With lips parted the chiefs bent forward to catch the words which should fall from her mouth. Tall and thin she was, and shapely. But the shadows of a great toil and a great sorrow clung about her lean cheeks and under her black eyes, grown too big with much weeping.
“Fathers,” she began, “I will tell you how my bad deed grew upon me; and you shall judge. I will take the punishment, for I have felt much aching of the breast and I can stand yet a little more.
“Three summers ago I followed the man of the singing box into the North. This you know—but the rest you do not know. It is the way of the paleface to toil for the white metal. They showed my man the white metal, and it led him into the North among strange peoples, where there is much gathering of furs. And I went with him, for a woman is weak and must follow the man.
“Far into the North we went where the Smoky Water runs thin so that a very little man can throw a stone across it. And the singing box went with us.
“And we built a lodge of logs, after the manner of his people, near to a great log lodge where the big pale chief lived and said words that should be obeyed. And for a time our hearts sang together. But when the snows had come, it happened that the big pale chief spoke a word, and my man went with his brothers, driving many dogs further into the North where there are furs of much worth.
“And when my man left he said, ‘Take good care of Vylin while I am gone, for she is dearer to me than my life.’ And I stared at him because I did not understand. It was the singing box of which he spoke; as though it were a person he spoke of it; he called it Vylin; and much I wondered.