the past, the young men careless of the future,
the children already transformed, and, as they glanced up, some smiling,
some grave and dreaming, Elsie shuddered with a species of awe; it
seemed as if a people were being disintegrated before her eyes; that the
evolution of a race having proceeded for countless ages by almost
imperceptible degrees was now and here rushing, as by mighty bounds,
from war to peace, from hunting to harvesting, from primitive indolence
to ordered thrift. They were, indeed, passing, as the plains and the
wild spaces were passing; as the buffalo had passed; as every wild thing
must pass before the ever-thickening flood of white ploughmen pressing
upon the land.

Twice they circled, and then, as they all massed before him, Curtis rose
to sign to them.

"I am very proud of you. All my friends are pleased. My heart is big
with emotion and my head is full of thoughts. This is a great day for
you and also for me. Some of you are sad, for you long for the old
things--the big, broad plain, the elk, and the buffalo. So do I. I
loved those things also. But you have seen how it is. The water of the
stream never turns back to the spring, the old man never grows young,
the tree that falls does not rise up again. So the old things come never
again. We have always to look ahead. Perhaps, in the happy
hunting-ground all will be different, but here now we must do our best
to live upon the earth. It is the law that, now the game being gone, we
must plough and sow and reap the fruit of the soil. That is the meaning
of all we have done to-day. We have put away the rifle; we here take up
the hoe.

"I am glad; my heart is like a bird; it sings when I see you happy.
Listen--I will tell you a great secret. You see this young woman," he
touched Elsie. "You see she wears the Tetong dress, the same as I; that
means much. It signifies two things: Last year her heart was hard
towards the Tetongs; now it is soft. She is proud of what you have done.
She wears this dress for another reason; she is going to be my wife, and
help me show you the good way." At this moment a chorus of pleased
outcries broke forth. "Now, go to your feast. Let everything be orderly.
To-night we will come to see you dance."

With an outburst of jocular whooping, the young men wheeled their horses
and vanished under cover of a cloud of dust, while the old men and the
women and the children moved sedately back to camp; the women chattering
gayly