e," sobbed Nell, bursting into tears.
"His coldness--his neglect those--last few days--hurt me--so. If he
cared--as you say--I won't be--so--miserable."

"We are both right--you when you say he will never return, and I
when I say he loved us both," said Jim sadly, as the bitter
certainty forced itself into his mind.

As she sobbed softly, and he gazed with set, stern face into the
darkening forest, the deep, mellow notes of the church bell pealed
out. So thrilled, so startled were they by this melody wondrously
breaking the twilight stillness, that they gazed mutely at each
other. Then they remembered. It was the missionary's bell summoning
the Christian Indians to the evening service.

Chapter XI.

The, sultry, drowsy, summer days passed with no untoward event to
mar their slumbering tranquillity. Life for the newcomers to the
Village of Peace brought a content, the like of which they had never
dreamed of. Mr. Wells at once began active work among the Indians,
preaching to them through an interpreter; Nell and Kate, in hours
apart from household duties, busied themselves brightening their new
abode, and Jim entered upon the task of acquainting himself with the
modes and habits of the redmen. Truly, the young people might have
found perfect happiness in this new and novel life, if only Joe had
returned. His disappearance and subsequent absence furnished a theme
for many talks and many a quiet hour of dreamy sadness. The
fascination of his personality had been so impelling that long after
it was withdrawn a charm lingered around everything which reminded
them of him; a subtle and sweet memory, with perverse and half
bitter persistence, returned hauntingly. No trace of Joe had been
seen by any of the friendly Indian runners. He was gone into the
mazes of deep-shadowed forests, where to hunt for him would be like
striving to trail the flight of a swallow. Two of those he had left
behind always remembered him, and in their thoughts followed him in
his wanderings.

Jim settled down to his study of Indians with single-heartedness of
purpose. He spent part of every morning with the interpreters, with
whose assistance he rapidly acquired the Delaware language. He went
freely among the Indians, endeavoring to win their good-will. There
were always fifty to an hundred visiting Indians at the village;
sometimes, when the missionaries had advertised a special meeting,
there were assembled in the shady maple grove as many