other side of
the stream to his assistance.

Mary also told him (and it was evening ere she finished all she had to
tell him) how that, on another occasion, Dick was out after grislies
with a hunter, who had somehow allowed himself to be caught by a bear,
and would have been torn in pieces had not Dick come up with his great
two-edged sword--having fired off his rifle without effect--and, with
one mighty sweep at the monster's neck, cut right through its jugular
vein, and all its other veins, down to the very marrow of its backbone;
in fact, killed it at one blow--a feat which no one had ever done, or
had ever heard of as being done, from the days of the first Indian to
that hour.

Many such stories did Mary relate to the poor invalid, who bore his
sufferings with exemplary patience and fortitude, and listened with
unflagging interest; but of all the stories she told, none seemed to
afford her so much pleasure in the telling as the following:--

One day Dick went out to hunt buffaloes, on his big horse, for he had
several steeds, one or other of which he rode according to fancy; but he
always mounted the big black one when he went after the buffalo or to
war. Mary here explained, very carefully, that Dick never went to war
on his own account--that he was really a man of peace, but that, when he
saw oppression and cruelty, his blood boiled within him at such a rate
that he almost went mad, and often, under the excitement of hot
indignation, would he dash into the midst of a band of savages and
scatter them right and left like autumn leaves.

Well, as he was riding along among the mountains, near the banks of a
broad stream, and not far from the edge of the great prairie, he came
suddenly on an object that caused his eyes to glare and his teeth to
grind; for there, under the shade of a few branches, with a pot of water
by her side, sat an old Indian woman. Dick did not need to ask what she
was doing there. He knew the ways of the redskins too well to remain a
moment in doubt. She had grown so old and feeble that her relations had
found her burdensome; so, according to custom, they left her there to
die. The poor old creature knew that she was a burden to them. She
knew also the customs of her tribe--it was at her own request she had
been left there, a willing victim to an inevitable fate, because she
felt that her beloved children would get on better without her. They
made no objection. Food, to last for a fe