is suffering most horrid torture. Death in its most dreadful form may
be staring them in the face, and yet the outsider may look in vain for
the blanching of the cheek, or the quivering of a muscle. Very early in
life does this stern education begin.

"That is my best child," said an Indian father, as he pointed out an
apparently happy little girl seven or eight years old, in his wigwam.

"Why should she be your favourite child?" was asked him.

"Why? Because she, of all my children, will go the longest without
food, without crying," was his answer.

To suffer, but to show no sign, is the proverb of the true Indian. And
yet Astumastao would not admit even to herself that she was deeply in
love with Oowikapun. She had treasured the fond conceit in her heart
that the one all-absorbing passion with her was that which she had
freely revealed to him, and she in her simplicity had honestly believed
that no other love could take its place, or even share the room in her
heart.

But here was a rude awakening. She was a mystery to herself. Why these
sighs and tears when she was alone and unwatched by her bright-eyed,
alert young associates? Why did the image of this one young Indian
hunter intrude itself so persistently before her in her waking hours?
It is true he came not frequently to her in her dreams, for we dream but
little of those we love the most, and who are in our memories and on our
hearts continually during the waking hours of active life.

Untaught in the schools and free from all the guiles of heartless
coquetry, an orphan girl in an Indian village, with neither prudery on
the one hand, nor hothouse teachings on the other, which turn the heads
of so many girls, Astumastao was to herself a riddle which she could not
solve--a problem the most difficult of any she had tried to understand.

Her maidenly modesty seemed first to tell her to banish his image from
her heart, and his name from her lips. To accomplish this she threw
herself with renewed diligence into the duties incident to her simple
yet laborious life, and by her very activities endeavoured to bring
herself back to the sweet simplicities of her earlier days. But
fruitless were all her efforts. The heart transfixed, was too strong
for her head, and the new love which had so unconsciously come to her
would not be stilled or banished.

A true daughter of Eve was this forest maiden, even if she did live in a
wigwam, and had never read a no