to
New England and the Middle States, but the West to her mind was simply
land--"oceans of it," as she expressed herself--"where every one was at
liberty to choose without infringin' upon anybody."

"Don't you ever stop to build up churches?" said Mrs. Eastman to Jasper.

"No."

"You just baptize 'em, and let 'em run. That's what I can't understand.
I can't get at it. What are you really doin'? Now, say?"

"I am the Voice in the wilderness, preparing the way."

"No family name?"

"No. What have I to do with a name?"

"No money?"

"Only what I earn."

"That's queerer yet. Well, you are just the man to preach to the
uninhabited places of the earth. Tell us more about Black Hawk. I want
to hear of him, although we all are wastin' a pile of time when we all
ought to be to work. Tell us about Black Hawk, and then we'll all up and
be doin'. My fire is goin' out now."

"He's a revengeful critter, that Black Hawk," said Thomas Lincoln, "and
you had better be pretty wary of him. You don't know Indians. He's a
flint full of fire, so people say that come to the smithy. You look
out."

"He has had his wrongs," said Jasper, "and he has been led by his animal
nature to try to avenge them. Had he listened to the higher teachings of
the soul, it might have been different. We should teach him."

"What was it that set him against white folks?" asked Mrs. Eastman.

"He told me the whole story," said Jasper, "and it made my heart bleed
for him. He's a child of Nature, and has a great soul, but it needs a
teacher. The Indians need teachers. I am sent to teach in the
wilderness, and to be fed by the birds of the air. I am sent from over
the sea. But listen to the tale of Black Hawk. You complain of your
wrongs, don't you? Why should not he?

"Years ago Black Hawk had an old friend whom he dearly loved, for the
friendships of Indians are ardent and noble. That friend had a boy, and
Black Hawk loved this boy and adopted him as his own, and became as a
father to him, and taught him to hunt and to go to war. When Black Hawk
joined the British he wished to take this boy with him to Canada; but
his own father said that he needed him to care for him in his old age,
to fish and to hunt for him. He said, moreover, that he did not like
his boy to fight against the Americans, who had always treated him
kindly. So Black Hawk left the boy with his old father.

"On his return to Rock River and the bluffs of the Mississippi, after
the w