"If you will but let me I can hide you here. The cavern is my own. Here
for many a moon have I worked and waited. No one would dare to enter.
You will be safe. Besides, my father's anger will grow cold in time, and
then I know that, if I ask him, he will help you."

His chin propped upon his hands, the young nobleman moodily considered.

"Well, do then as thou deemest best," he told her finally.

And from that moment there began for the little princess a time so
wonderful that for all the rest of her life she remembered each separate
hour as though it had been some beautiful word in a poem learned by
heart.

With deft fingers she piled her softest doeskins for his bed.

"But what wilt thou do, tell me, if I rob thee of thy nest?" he asked,
watching her with amused eyes as she worked.

"I go always to the village to sleep," she answered simply, and so left
him.

But in the morning while yet the red of sunrise burned above the great
peak Orazaba, she returned, bearing upon her head an olla of carved
stone filled with water from a mountain spring. This in smiling silence
she set before him and disappeared. Within the hour, however, she was
back again and this time, kneeling on the ground, she laid at his feet
the ripe fruit of the manzanita tree, lying like small red apples, dewy
fresh, upon a wild-grape leaf.