k, has few comforts. Solitary he
sits wrapped in his blanket, or lies on the ground, with no one to
nurse or care for him; no nice dishes to tempt his feeble appetite, no
hand to bathe his fevered brow, no medicines to assuage his pain or
drive disease away.

"Why, Long Hair," cried Tom, "why didn't you let me know that you were
sick?"

But Long Hair sat shaking in his blanket, and, as usual, heard, but
made no answer, only with his expressive eyes.

Tom brought in wood, and started the fire, and saying, "Mother'll know
just what to do for you, Long Hair; I'll go and tell her how you are,"
he ran to his mother's cabin, and, quickly making some nourishing
gruel, and putting up a store of simples that she used in fever and
ague, she returned with Tom to the lodge. What a treasure is a loving,
experienced woman in sickness, whether in a palace, a log house, or
beneath the rude shelter of an Indian's moving home--ever gentle,
exhaustless in resources, untiring in her ministrations! It seemed a
marvel to Tom how readily his mother knew just what to do for Long
Hair, intuitively adapting herself to his Indian peculiarities; and,
for the week that his illness lasted, she nursed him with great
tenderness, often remarking to Tom,--

"He is one of God's children, Tom; for the Bible says, 'God has made
of one blood all the nations of men to dwell upon the face of the
earth,' and Jesus died for the red man as much as for the white."

Through all this womanly care of him by Mrs. Jones, and brotherly
attention of Tom, the Indian, while shivering with the chill, or
burning and panting with the fever, made no acknowledgments of
kindness shown him, or uttered a word of complaint as he suffered,
and, when he recovered, returned in silence to his Indian
occupations.

"I wouldn't give one of the red skins a glass of water to save his
life!" exclaimed a settler who had lost by the depredations of the
Indians. "There isn't a particle of gratitude in one of 'em. Give any
of them all you have, and ten to one he'll steal upon you out of a
bush, and take your scalp."

"It is too true of most of the Indians, I admit," said Mrs. Jones,
"and perhaps Long Hair will prove ungrateful; but I only did as the
Bible directs, and I am contented."

But, some days after, as Long Hair strode into her cabin with a
freshly-killed deer on his shoulder, which he deposited at her feet,
saying, as he left,--for he tarried not to sit down,--"White squaw,