uld have thought them
lords of the soil, come to collect rent of tardy tenantry.

The young Indian, however, still preserved his individuality, and
various romantic conjectures were conjured up in imaginative heads
concerning him. Some went so far as to assert that he had no Indian
blood in him, and started the theory that he must have had white
parentage, and that he might have been stolen, when a child, from some
noble white family. But the more experienced of the pioneers set that
at rest by affirming that they could tell the pure, unmixed Indian,
and that he was one.

Tom lingered much about him.

"O," said he to the missionary, "if I could only talk with him, how I
would love to teach him how to read, and speak to him of the blessed
things in the Bible!"

"That is on my mind most of the time, Tom," replied the good man. "I
am often asking myself. Can I not, in some way, lead these benighted
souls to the Lamb of God? But how inaccessible they are! What an
impassable barrier between them and us! and, with the exception of the
youngest of them, how brutal and low! To see such splendidly-formed
men spend their time squatted on the earth, playing jack-straws, or
some equally silly game, from morning to night, is pitiful. And then
their yelling and laughter are more like wild beasts or demons than
human beings. These people seem to me the lowest, meanest, most
treacherous, and hardened of the human race. I do not wonder that it
is so difficult to civilize or Christianize them."

Weeks went by, and the Indians remained in their lodge, daily growing
bolder and more intrusive, till they had become obnoxious to the most
benevolent of the settlers. It had come to be not over pleasant to the
women of the neighborhood to look up from their domestic duties, and
see that a grim savage had stolen into the house, and, unasked, seated
himself in a chair, ready, as soon as he thought best, to nod, in a
dictatorial way, towards some coveted article, in a manner which
meant,--

"Hand that to me!"

Meanwhile Tom and the young Indian--who, whether that was his real
Indian name or not, was called _Long Hair_--had become quite
intimate. Nevertheless, not many words passed between them, for Long
Hair was more reticent, if possible, than the rest of his company. But
without word-signs they managed to understand each other. Long Hair,
indeed, appeared to read Tom's thoughts intuitively, and Mrs. Payson
was often made anxious for Tom