night and shot our stock, and would have murdered us only that they
could get more out of us by letting us live. They came by in
processions, put up their wigwams in our very yard, and ate up
everything we had in the house. We dared not see the wrong they did. I
was often alone when they came, and I always wondered if that would not
be the last of me and my little boys.

"But, though here and there men and women and even little babies were
tomahawked, we were never harmed, for some reason; and, as the years
went by, people began to come and settle near us. Then the post was
established, and we could go to church once a summer. I went with the
boys, because some one always had to remain home to watch the farm. That
is why I never visited a town the first ten years after we settled here.
Then you came,--just a few days--before--we lost--your--father."

The little girl smoothed back her mother's hair lovingly. The time had
come to tell of her discovery on the bluff. "I've seen it," she said in
a low voice.

Her mother understood. "We wanted you to find it out by yourself," she
answered. "The boys took away the stones and put up the cross the night
before they left." She sighed and then went on:

"I have been thinking about you to-night--about your future--in
recalling my years here on the plains. I am no longer young, pet lamb; I
was never very strong. I may not always be with you." Her voice broke a
little. She tightened her grasp of the little girl's fingers.

"I do not worry about the boys. They will marry and settle down among
our good neighbors. But you, my little girl, what will you do? Not stay,
I hope, hoeing and herding and working your life out in the kitchen,
with nothing to brighten the days. I cannot bear to think of that. I
lived on here after your father was taken because I feared the
responsibility of raising my boys in a great, strange city; and I
dreaded the thought of leaving your father's grave. But now I often
wonder if I have acted for the best. Selfish in my grief and loss, have
I not deprived the boys of the advantages they should have had? For you,
it is not yet too late.

"Whether I am taken from you or not, I want you to leave the prairie and
spend the rest of your life where you can enjoy the best things that
life offers--music and pictures and travel, and the friendship of
cultivated people. In twenty years--perhaps less, for the plains are
changing swiftly--all these level, fertile miles