ask any boy to give up his language, his clothes, his customs,
his old-time way of living, his name, even the church of his fathers.
I must have patience, patience?"

"You speak?" asked the boy.

"Just to myself," said Mr. Enderby.

"I speak," said the little Indian, standing up and looking fearlessly
into the superintendent's face. "I speak. I keep hair, good. I keep name
Wolf-Willow, good. I keep skin Indian color. I not white man's skin.
English skin no good. My skin best, good."

Mr. Enderby laughed. "No, no, Little Wolf-Willow, we won't try to change
the color of your skin," he said.

"No good try. I keep skin, better skin than white man. I keep skin, me."
And the next instant he was gone.

Miss Watson, the matron, appeared at the door. "What have you done to
Little Wolf-Willow?" she asked in surprise. "Why, he is careering down
the hall at a breakneck speed."

"I believe the child thought I was going to skin him, to make a white
boy out of him," laughed Mr. Enderby.

"Poor little chap! I expect you wanted to cut off his hair," said Miss
Watson, "and perhaps call him Tom, Dick, Harry, or some such name."

"I did," answered the superintendent. "The other boys have all come
to it."

"Yes, I know they have," agreed Miss Watson, "but there is something
about that boy that makes me think that you'll never get his hair or
his name away from him."

And she was right. They never did.

It was six years before Little Wolf-Willow again entered the door of
his father's tepee. He returned to the Crooked Lakes speaking English
fluently, and with the excellent appointment of interpreter for the
Government Indian Agent. The instant his father saw him, the alert Cree
eye noted the uncut hair. Nothing could have so pleased old Beaver-Tail.
He had held for years a fear in his heart that the school would utterly
rob him of his boy. Little Wolf-Willow's mother arose from preparing
an antelope stew for supper. She looked up into her son's face. When
he left he had not been as high as her ear tips. With the wonderful
intuition of mothers the world over, she knew at the first glance that
they had not made him into a white man. Years seemed to roll from her
face. She had been so fearful lest he should not come back to their old
prairie life.

"Rest here," she said, in the gentle Cree tongue. "Rest here, Little
Wolf-Willow; it is your home."

The boy himself had been almost afraid to come. He had grown accustomed
to sleep