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“No matter,” he said to her excuses, and bending a troubled look on me, the doubt in him spoke out openly.

“It was of this, I think, she spoke to me.”

At that slight emphasis the dark man who had the smith’s tools on him, looked at me with so sharp and surprising an interest that it distracted me from noticing who it was behind me asked with some eagerness:

“Of what did she speak?”

“That there was one walking toward us on the trail, bearing trouble. On the morning of our leaving, she waked me early to say it. I am thinking this is the one. If you have forgotten the cup, Evarra, it is an omen.”

The interest of all the wood folk reawakened. They began to regard me with so much distrust that I was relieved when the chief made a sign to Noche to take me a little to one side. Thus they talk more freely, looking at me from time to time, sometimes seeming to blame the woman, and sometimes to praise her.

Noche was that same old man who had brought me from the neighborhood of Broken Tree, whose mild blue eyes, set rather shallowly in a broad face, continued to reassure me.