rises and
another falls. Here you are not first, but last; and the child of the
white father and mother, though they be as the dirt that flies from a
horse's heels, it is before you. Your mother is a Blackfoot."

As the woman spoke slowly and with many pauses, the girl's mood changed,
and there came into her eyes a strange, dark look deeper than anger. She
listened with a sudden patience which stilled the agitation in her breast
and gave a little touch of rigidity to her figure. Her eyes withdrew from
the wild storm without and gravely settled on her mother's face, and with
the Indian woman's last words understanding pierced, but did not dispel,
the sombre and ominous look in her eyes.

There was silence for a moment, and then she spoke almost as evenly as her
mother had done.

"I will tell you everything. You are my mother, and I love you; but you
will not see the truth. When my father took you from the lodges and
brought you here, it was the end of the Indian life. It was for you to go
on with him, but you would not go. I was young, but I saw, and I said that
in all things I would go with him. I did not know that it would be hard,
but at school, at the very first, I began to understand. There was only
one, a French girl--I loved her--a girl who said to me, 'You are as white
as I am, as any one, and your heart is the same, and you are beautiful.'
Yes, Manette said I was beautiful."

She paused a moment, a misty, far-away look came into her eyes, her
fingers clasped and unclasped, and she added:

"And her brother, Julien--he was older--when he came to visit Manette he
spoke to me as though I was all white, and was good to me. I have never
forgotten, never. It was five years ago, but I remember him. He was tall
and strong, and as good as Manette--as good as Manette. I loved Manette,
but she suffered for me, for I was not like the others, and my ways were
different--then. I had lived up there on the Warais among the lodges, and
I had not seen things--only from my father, and he did so much in an
Indian way. So I was sick at heart, and sometimes I wanted to die; and
once--But there was Manette, and she would laugh and sing, and we would
play together, and I would speak French and she would speak English, and I
learned from her to forget the Indian ways. What were they to me? I had
loved them when I was of them, but I came on to a better life. The Indian
life is to the white life as the parfleche pouch to--to this." Sh