He hardly saw Nina during these last days, although the beloved daughter was ever present in his thoughts.

He hardly took notice of Dain, whose constant presence in his house had become a matter of course to him now they were connected by a community of interests.

When meeting the young chief he gave him an absent greeting and passed on, seemingly wishing to avoid him, bent upon forgetting the hated reality of the present by absorbing himself in his work, or else by letting his imagination soar far above the tree-tops into the great white clouds away to the westward, where the paradise of Europe was awaiting the future Eastern millionaire.

And Maroola, now the bargain was struck and there was no more business to be talked over, evidently did not care for the white man's company.

Yet Dain was always about the house, but he seldom stayed long by the riverside.