y they had no letters. But she knew how to split
open the fish she had caught, how to clean them, how to broil them on
the coals, and how to eat them neatly. She had never studied the
"analysis of her language." But she knew how to use it like a lady; that
is, prettily, simply, without pretence, and always truly. She could sing
her baby brother to sleep. She could tell stories to her sisters all day
long. And she and they were not afraid when evening came, or when they
were in any trouble, to say a prayer aloud to the good God. So they got
along, although they could not analyze their language. She knew no
geography. She could count her fingers, and the stars in the Southern
Cross. She had never seen Orion, or the stars in the Great Bear, or the
Pole-Star.

Oello was very young when she married a young kinsman, with whom she had
grown up since they were babies. Nobody knows much about him. But he
loved her and she loved him. And when morning came they were not afraid
to pray to God together,--and when night came she asked her husband to
forgive her if she had troubled him, and he asked her to forgive
him,--so that their worries and trials never lasted out the day. And
they lived a very happy life, till they were very old and died.

There is a bad gap in the beginning of their history. I do not know how
it happened. But the first I knew of them, they had left their old home
and were wandering alone on foot toward the South. Sometimes I have
thought a great earthquake had wrecked their old happy home. Sometimes I
have thought there was some horrid pestilence, or fire. No matter what
happened, something happened,--so that Oello and her husband, of a hot,
very hot day, were alone under a forest of laurels mixed with palms,
with bright flowering orchids on them, looking like a hundred
butterflies; ferns, half as high as the church is, tossing over them;
nettles as large as trees, and tangled vines, threading through the
whole. They were tired, oh, how tired! hungry, oh, how hungry! and hot
and foot-sore.

"I wish so we were out of this hole," said he to her, "and yet I am
afraid of the people we shall find when we come down to the lake side."

"I do not know," said Oello, "why they should want to hurt us."

"I do not know why they should want to," said he, "but I am afraid they
will hurt us."

"But we do not want to hurt them," said she. "For my part, all I want is
a shelter to live under; and I will help them take care