r not call me Gaspar, you can please say 'Dark-Eye.'
That's my new Indian name; but I hate those other ones. They make me
think I am a baby. And I'm not. I am a man, almost."

"So you be. So you be," agreed Abel, admiring the little fellow's
spirit. "I 'low you've seen sights, now, hain't you?"

"Yes, dreadful ones; so dreadful that I can't talk about them to
anybody. Not even to you, who have given us this nice food and let us
warm ourselves. I would if I could, you see; only when I let myself
think, I just get queer in the head and afraid. So I won't even think.
It doesn't do for a boy to be afraid. Not when he has his mother and
sister to take care of."

There was the faintest lightening of the gloom upon the Indian woman's
face as Dark-Eye said this. But he was, apart from his terror of
bloodshed and fighting, a courageous lad, and had, during their past
days of wandering, proved the good stuff of which he was made. Many a
day he had gone without eating that the remnant of their food might be
saved for the Sun Maid; and though it was, of course, Wahneenah who
had taken all the care of the children, if it pleased him to consider
their cases reversed he should be left to his own opinion.

"You're right, boy. I'll call you Gaspar, easy enough. Only, you see,
I hain't got no sons of my own an' it kind of makes things seem cosier
if I call other folkes's youngsters that way. Every little shaver this
side of Illinois calls me 'Uncle Abe,' I reckon. But go on with your
yarn. My, my, my! Won't Mercy be beat when she comes home an' hears
all that's happened whilst she was gone. Go on."

So Gaspar told all that had occurred since the Black Partridge parted
from his sister in the cavern and rode away toward St. Joseph's. How
that very day came one of the visiting Indians who had been staying at
Muck-otey-pokee and whose behavior toward the neighboring white
settlers had been a prominent cause of bringing the soldiers' raid
upon the innocent and friendly hosts who had entertained him.

The wicked like not solitude, and in the train of this traitor had
followed many others. These had turned the cave into a pandemonium and
had appropriated to their own uses the stores which Black Partridge
had provided for Wahneenah. When to this robbery they had added
threats against the lives of the white children, whose presence at the
Indian village they in their turn declared had brought destruction
upon it, the chief's sister had take