is traps, and his skins, and his powder, and his friend, but
cares not for Manitou, who gave him all these--all that he possesses."

"Look 'ee here, Whitewing," returned the trapper, in his matter-of-fact
way, "there's nothing strange about it. I see you, and I see my gun and
these other things, and can handle 'em; but I don't know nothin' about
Manitou, and I don't see him, so what's the good o' thinkin' about him?"

Instead of answering, the red man looked silently and wistfully up into
the blue sky, which could be seen through the raised curtain of the
wigwam. Then, pointing to the landscape before them, he said in subdued
but earnest tones, "I see him in the clouds--in the sun, and moon, and
stars; in the prairies and in the mountains; I hear him in the singing
waters and in the winds that scatter the leaves, and I feel him here."

Whitewing laid his hand on his breast, and looked in his friend's face.

"But," he continued sadly, "I do not understand him, he whispers so
softly that, though I hear, I cannot comprehend. I wonder why this is
so."

"Ay, that's just it, Whitewing," said the trapper. "We can't make it
out nohow, an' so I just leaves all that sort o' thing to the parsons,
and give my mind to the things that I understand."

"When Little Tim was a very small boy," said the Indian, after a few
minutes' meditation, "did he understand how to trap the beaver and the
martin, and how to point the rifle so as to carry death to the grizzly
bear?"

"Of course not," returned the trapper; "seems to me that that's a
foolish question."

"But," continued the Indian, "you came to know it at last?"

"I should just think I did," returned the trapper, a look of
self-satisfied pride crossing his scarred visage as he thought of the
celebrity as a hunter to which he had attained. "It took me a goodish
while, of course, to circumvent it all, but in time I got to be--well,
you know what, an' I'm not fond o' blowin' my own trumpet."

"Yes; you came to it at last," repeated Whitewing, "by giving your mind
to things that at first you _did not understand_."

"Come, come, my friend," said Little Tim, with a laugh; "I'm no match
for you in argiment, but, as I said before, I don't understand Manitou,
an' I don't see, or feel, or hear him, so it's of no use tryin'."

"What my friend knows not, another may tell him," said Whitewing. "The
white man says he knows Manitou, and brings a message from him. Three
times I have