the posies. Yellow posies gone--I go find them, too."

As if it were the best joke in the world, the little creature still
laughed over her own conceit of so many runnings till, in whirling
about, she discovered the remnants of the flowers she had lost upon
the heat-hardened path behind her. Indeed, when she had dropped down
to sleep, overcome by sudden weariness, it had been with the cool
leaves and blossoms for a couch. Now the love of all green and growing
things was an inborn passion with this child, and her face sobered to
a keen distress as she gazed upon her ruined treasures. But almost at
once the cloud passed, and she laughed again.

"Poor posies, tired posies, sleepy, too. Kitty sorry. Put them in the
water trough and wake them up. Then they hold their eyes open, just
like Kitty's."

"Ugh! Where the papoose sleeps the blossoms wither," remarked Black
Partridge, regarding the bruised and faded plants with more attention.
They were wild orchids, and he knew that the child must have wandered
far afield to obtain them. At that time of year such blooms were
extremely rare, and only to be found in the moist shadows of some
tree-bordered stream quite remote from this sandy beach.

"Oh, dear! Something aches my feet. I will go home to my little bed.
Pick up the posies, Feather-man, and take poor Kitty."

With entire confidence that the Indian would do as she wished, the
small maid clasped his buckskin-covered knee and leaned her dimpled
cheek against it. It proved a comfortable support, and with a babyish
yawn she promptly fell asleep again.

Had she been a child of his own village, even of his own wigwam, Black
Partridge would have shaken her roughly aside, feeling his dignity
affronted by her familiarity; but in her case he could not do this and
on this night least of all.

The little estray was the orphan of Fort Dearborn; whose soldier
father had met a soldier's common fate, and whose mother had quickly
followed him with her broken heart. Then the babe of a few weeks
became the charge of the kind women at the Fort, and the pet of the
garrison in general.

But now far graver matters than the pranks of a mischievous child
filled the minds of all her friends. The peaceful, monotonous life of
the past few years was over, and the order had gone forth that the
post should be evacuated. Preparations had already begun for the long
and hazardous journey which confronted that isolated band of white
people, and the