, because he would be gone so long in
the woods with Long Hair. The latter had selected a tree for a canoe,
and Tom, with his sharp-edged axe, cut it down for him, and helped him
dig it out and shape it. A strange sympathy had grown up between them,
and one evening, as Tom was on his way to the prayer-meeting, chancing
to meet Long Hair, he invited the latter to accompany him, trying,
with great earnestness, to make him comprehend the object of the
gathering. Long Hair seemed to gain a dim perception of what his
friend meant, and, after much persuasion, entered with Tom the cabin
in which the meeting was to be held. The Indian's face gave evidence
of great excitement as the services progressed; the deep solemnity of
the prayers, and the devout strains of Christian song, took powerful
hold of the red man's feelings. Doubtless he understood little of the
scene in which, for the first time, he mingled; but a potent influence
went along with it, and so affected was he, that his hand sought
Tom's, and he held it in a strong, tender grasp till the meeting
closed, his frame trembling with emotion. And yet Tom could not
converse with him afterwards; and what the nature of the emotion was
that shook him so,--what thoughts were stirred, and with what result
for eternity in the bosom of that silent son of the prairie, who, for
the first time, had attended Christian worship,--no one knew. Tom
could not induce him to attend again, and yet he did not seem offended
at what he had heard; but when his white friend alluded to it, his eye
gleamed with a new light, and his face looked thoughtfully, doubtfully
serious.

Nearly every day Tom and Long Hair were together, the latter keeping
but little in the wigwam, and seldom going with the other Indians.
When they filed into town, and besieged the houses, trying the doors,
peeping into the windows, accosting the street-passers, Long Hair was
not with them; and when at evening they returned exultant from a
successful hunt, singing their strong-lunged song of triumph,--their
wild and scarcely human "Hi yar! hi yar!" growing nearer, till,
entering the village, they sang their way through to their lodge, Long
Hair was not of their number.

One day Tom, chancing to visit the wigwam, found Long Hair there,
shivering with a violent attack of ague. He was alone, and had been
for two days.

How bare and cheerless appeared the Indian's life to Tom's sympathetic
nature then! for an Indian, when sic