our own--our own people!" Kissing her, he drew her down beside him on
the couch. "Tell me again--it is so at last?" he said, and she
whispered in his ear once more.

In the middle of the night he said to her, "Some day, perhaps, we will
go East--some day, perhaps."

"But now?" she asked softly.

"Not now--not if I know it," he answered. "I've got my heart nailed to
the door of this lodge."

As he slept she got quietly out, and, going to the door of the lodge,
reached up a hand and touched the horse-shoe.

"Be good Medicine to me," she said. Then she prayed. "O Sun, pity me
that it may be as I have said to him. O pity me, great Father!"

In the days to come Swift Wing said that it was her Medicine; when her
hand was burned to the wrist in the dark ritual she had performed with
the Medicine Man the night that Mitiahwe fought for her man--but Mitiahwe
said it was her Medicine, the horse-shoe, which brought one of Dingan's
own people to the lodge, a little girl with Mitiahwe's eyes and form and
her father's face. Truth has many mysteries, and the faith of the woman
was great; and so it was that, to the long end, Mitiahwe kept her man.
But truly she was altogether a woman, and had good fortune.