e
being, she forgot the stories she had heard, and remembered only that
there was suffering which she must relieve. It might be that already
the soul of Spotted Adder was winged for its long flight, and could
carry for her to that wide Unknown, where her own dead tarried, some
message from her, the bereft. As this thought flashed through her
brain she seized the bowl and hastened with it to the lodge.

This time, also, she forgot everything but the possibility that had
come to her, and kneeling beside the old Indian she held the dish to
his mouth.

"It is the fever, the fever! A little while and the awful chill will
come again. The racking pain, the thirst! Ugh! Wahneenah, the Happy,
is braver than her sisters. Her courage shall prove her blessing. The
lips of the dying speak truth."

"And the ears of the dying? Can they still hear and remember? Will the
Spotted Adder take my message to the men I have lost? Sire and son,
there was no Pottawatomie ever born so brave as they. Tell them I have
been faithful. I have been the Woman-Who-Mourns. I have kept to my
darkened wigwam and remembered only them, till she came, this child
you have seen. She is a gift from the sky. She has come to comfort
and sustain. She was born a pale-face, but she has a red man's heart.
She is all brave and true and dauntless. None fear her, and she fears
none. I believe that they have sent her to me. I believe that in her
they both live. Ask them if this is so."

"There is no need to ask, Wahneenah, the Happy. Happy, indeed, who has
been blessed with a gift so gracious. She is the Merciful. The
Unafraid. She will pass in safety through many perils. All day she has
sat beside me whom all others shun. She has moistened my lips, she has
kept the gnats from stinging, she has sung in her unknown tongue of
that land whither I go, and soon,--the land of the sky from whence she
came. The light of the morning is on her hair and the dusk of evening
in her eyes. As she has ministered to me, the deserted, the solitary,
so she will minister unto multitudes. I can see them crowding,
crowding; the generations yet unborn. The vision of the dying is
true."

On the floor beside them the Sun Maid sat, caressing the wounded
squirrel. Through the torn curtains the waning sunlight slanted and
lighted the bleak interior. It seemed to rest most brilliantly upon
the child, and in the eyes of the Spotted Adder she was like a lamp
set to illumine his path through the