red hand, wherever she went and whatever she did. He was her
shadow; and he was at that time little more than a shadow in any way.

Sometimes men pitied the little girl, and gave very liberally. They
tried to find out something about her past life; for although she was
quite the color of the Indian, she had regular features, and at times
her poor pinched face was positively beautiful. The two children looked
as if they had been literally stunted in their growth from starvation
and hardship.

Once a good-hearted old miner had bribed the squaws to let the children
come to his cabin and get something to eat. They came, and while they
were gorging themselves, the boy sitting close up to the girl all the
time, and looking about and back over his shoulder and holding on to
her dress, this man questioned her about her life and history. She did
not like to talk; indeed, she talked with difficulty at first, and her
few English words fell from her lips in broken bits and in strange
confusion. But at length she began to speak more clearly as she
proceeded with her story, and became excited in its narration. Then she
would stop and seem to forget it all. Then she went on, as if she was
telling a dream. Then there would be another long pause, and confusion,
and she would stammer on in the most wild and incoherent fashion, till
the old miner became quite impatient, and thought her as big an imposter
as the Indian woman whom she called her mother. He finally gave them
each a loaf of bread, and told them they could go back to their lodge.
This lodge consisted of a few poles set up in wigwam fashion, and
covered with skins and old blankets and birch. A foul, ugly place it
was, but in this wigwam lived two Indian women and these two children.

Men, or rather beasts--no, beasts are decent creatures; well then,
monsters, full of bad rum, would prowl about this wretched lodge at
night, and their howls, mixed with those of the savages, whom they had
made also drunk, kept up a state of things frightful to think of in
connection with these two sensitive, starving little waifs of the woods.

Who were they, and where did they come from? Sometimes these children
would start up and fly from the lodge at night, and hide away in the
brush like hunted things, and only steal back at morning when all was
still. At such times the girl would wrap her little brother (if he was
her brother) in her own scant rags, and hold him in her arms as he
slept.