rounds and
wigwams. I did not find it as pleasant as they had told me it would be.
Often they were very cruel to me, and sometimes we did not have much to
eat. But I dared not run away, for there was no place to which I could
go, except to other wicked Indians; and they would only make things
worse. They were all very bad Indians, and very much afraid of the
medicine men. All the worship they did was to the bad spirit. They
were afraid of him, and so they worshipped him, so that he might not do
them much harm. I became as bad as any of them. I tried to forget all
that the good Missionary had told me. I tried to wipe all his teachings
and prayers from my memory. All he had told me about the Good Spirit
and His Son I tried to forget.

"I grew up to be a man. I had become a wicked pagan; but I was a good
hunter, and one of the men sold me one of his daughters to be my wife.
We have quite a family. Because I had seen, when I was a little boy,
how Christian Indian men treat the women better than the pagan Indians
treat theirs, I treated my wife and children well. I was never cruel to
them. I love my wife and children.

"Last winter, you remember, the snow was very deep. I had taken my
family and gone out into the region of deer and other animals, and there
had made my hunting lodge for the winter. There we set our traps for
the fur-bearing animals. We took a good many of the smaller animals
that have got furs, but the larger ones, that are good for food, were
very few. We had a hard time, as food was very scarce. I could not
find any deer to shoot, and we had come far from the great lakes and
rivers, and so had no fish.

"At length it seemed as though we must starve. I tried hard to get
something, but I seemed to fail every time. Sometimes, when I did
manage to get within range of the moose or reindeer, and I fired, my
gun, which is only a flintlock, would only flash the powder in the pan,
and so the charge would not go off. The noise, however, had so
frightened the deer that he had rushed away before I could get ready to
fire again.

"At length it got so bad with us that I became completely discouraged,
and I said, `I will only try once more; and if I do not succeed in
shooting a deer, I will shoot myself.' So I took up my gun and hurried
into the forest away from my half-starved family. I cautiously tramped
along on my snowshoes all the first day, and did not see even a track.
I made a little ca