hief's daughter, to be thus
flouted by a baby, a pale-face at that? Surely, there was nothing
whatever spiritual now about this self-willed, spoiled creature, whom
an unkind fate had imposed upon her. She stooped to lift the little
one and compel obedience, but was met by a smile so fearless and happy
that her arms fell to her sides.

"That's a good Other Mother. Poor sick man has wanted to turn him
over, and he couldn't. Kitty tried and tried, and Kitty couldn't. Now
my Other Mother's come. She can. She is so beau'ful strong and kind!"

There was a grunt, which might have been a groan, from the corner of
the hut where the Spotted Adder lay; and a convulsive movement of the
contorted limbs as he vainly strove to change his uncomfortable
position. Wahneenah watched him, with the contempt which the women of
her race feel for any masculine weakness, and did not offer to assist.
His poverty she pitied, and would have relieved, though his physical
infirmity was repugnant to her. She would not touch him.

But the Sun Maid was on her feet at once, tenderly laying upon the
ground the wounded squirrel which she had held upon her lap. The wild
thing had, apparently, lost all its timidity and now fully trusted the
child who had caressed its fur and murmured soft, pitying sounds, in
that low voice of hers, which the Fort people had sometimes felt was
an unknown language. Certainly, she had had a strange power, always,
over any animal that came near her and this case was no exception. Her
white friends would not have been surprised by the incident, but
Wahneenah was, and it brought back her belief that this was a child of
supernatural gifts. She even began to feel ashamed of her treatment of
Spotted Adder, though she waited to see what his small nurse would do.

"Poor sick Feather-man! Is you hurted now? Does your face ache you to
make it screw itself all this way?" and she made a comical grimace,
imitative of the sufferer's expression.

"Ugh! Ugh!"

"Yes; Kitty hears. Other Mother, that is all the word he says. All the
time it is just 'Ugh! Ugh!' I wish he would talk Kitty's talk. Make
him do it, Other Mother. Please!"

"That I cannot do. He knows it not. But he has a speech I understand.
What need you, Spotted Adder?" she concluded, in his own dialect.

"Ugh! It is the voice of Wahneenah, the Happy. What does she here, in
the lodge of the outcast? It is many a moon since the footfall of a
woman sounded on my floor. Why do