tened to the old clearing of
the Smiths and had made Osceolo, aided by a few more frightened,
willing men, toil with himself to erect wigwams enough to accommodate
many persons. He had then returned for his household and had been met
by his wife's first resistance to his will.

"No, Gaspar, I cannot go. I have no fear. I am perfectly 'sound.'
Probably no healthier woman ever lived than I am. I have learned much
of nursing from Wahneenah, and my place, my duty, is here. I cannot
go."

"Kit! my Kitty! Are you beside yourself? Where is your duty, if not to
me and to our children?"

"Here, my husband, right here; in our beloved town, among the lonely
strangers who have come to save it from destruction and have laid
their lives at our feet."

"That is sheer nonsense. Your life is at stake."

"Is my life more precious than theirs?"

"Yes. Infinitely so. It is mine."

"It is God's--and humanity's--first, Gaspar."

"Your children, then; if you scorn my wishes."

"Don't make it hard for me, beloved; harder than God Himself has made
it. Do you take Mother Mercy and Abel and go to the place you have
prepared. The children will be as safe with her as with me; safer, for
she will watch them constantly, while I believe in leaving them to
grow by themselves. Between them and us you may come and go--up to a
certain point; but not to the peril of your taking the disease. The
Indians are no less on the war-path because the cholera has come.
_Your_ duty is afield, guarding, watching, preventing all the evil
that a wise man can. Mine is here, using the skill I have learned from
Wahneenah and faithfully at her side."

"Wahneenah? Does she wish to stay too; to nurse the pale-faces, the
men who have come here to fight her own race?"

"Yes, Gaspar, she is just so noble. Can I do less? I, with my
education, which the dear Doctor has given me, and my youth, my
perfect health, my entire fearlessness. You forget, sweetheart; I am
the Unafraid. Never more unafraid than now, never more sure that we
will come out of this trouble as we have come out of every other. Why,
dear, don't you remember old Katasha and her prophecy? I am to be
great and rich and beneficent. I am to be the helper of many people.
Well, then, since I am not great, and rich only through you, let me
begin at the last end of the prophecy, and be beneficent. Wait; even
now there is somebody coming toward us asking me for help."

"Kit, I can't have it. I won't. You are