ing with happy
children and puppies. Under low lodges of canvas or bowers of pine
branches the women were at work boiling meat or cooking a rude sort of
cruller. They were very shy, and mostly hung their heads as their
visitors passed, though they soon yielded to Jennie, who could speak a
few words to them.

"There's nothing in them for sculpture," said Parker, critically. "At
least not for beauty. They might be treated as Raffaelle paints--for
character."

"They grow heavy early," Jennie added, "but the little girls are
beautiful--see that little one!"

The crier, a tall old man, toothless and wrinkled and gray, began to cry
in a hollow, monotonous voice, "Come to the council place," and Curtis
led his flock to their places in the midst of the circle.

The council began with all the old-time forms, with gravity and decorum.
Red Wolf was in the centre, with Many Coups at his left. The pipe of
peace went round, and those whose minds were not yet prepared for speech
drew deep inspirations of the fragrant smoke in the hope that their
thoughts might be clarified, and when they lifted their eyes they seemed
not to perceive their visitors or those who passed to and fro among the
tepees. The sun, westering, fell with untempered light on their heads,
but they faced it with the calm unconcern of eagles.

To please his guests, Curtis allowed the utmost formality, and did not
hasten, interrupt, or excise. The speeches were translated into English
by Lawson, and at each telling point or period in Red Wolf's speech the
women looked at each other in surprise.

"Did he really say that?" asked Elsie. "Didn't you make it up?"

"Rather good for a ragamuffin, don't you think?" said Lawson, as the old
man took his seat.

Many Coups spoke slowly, sadly, as though half communing with himself,
with nothing of the bombast the visitors had expected, and he grew in
dignity and power as his thought began to make itself felt through his
interpreter.

"He is speaking for his race," remarked Lawson to Elsie.

"By Jove! the old fellow is a good lawyer!" cried Parker. "I don't see
any answer to his indictment."

Curtis sat listening as though each point the old man made were new--and
this attitude pleased the chieftains very much.

The speech, in its general tenor, was similar to many others he had
heard from thoughtful redmen. Briefly he described the time when the
redmen were happy in a land filled with deer and buffalo, before the
w