ad told her of a
movement far beyond the Indian encampments she was accustomed to
visit, which would bring serious trouble, if not complete disaster,
upon their beloved home. Osceolo was the Sun Maid's devoted follower;
yet the prank he had played upon the old Doctor, whom she so
reverenced, showed that he was already throwing aside the restraints
of his enforced civilization; and the sign was ominous.

CHAPTER XX.

ENEMIES, SEEN AND UNSEEN.

But the time passed on and the rumors died away, or ended in nothing
more serious than had always disturbed the dwellers in that lonely
land. Now and again a friendly, peace-loving chief would ride up to
the door of the Sun Maid's home, and, after a brief consultation she
would put on her Indian attire and ride back with him across the
prairies. As of old, she went with a heart full of love for her Indian
friends, but it was not the undivided love that she had once been able
to give them.

Over her beautiful features had settled the brooding look which
wifehood and motherhood gives; and though she listened as attentively
as of old and counselled as wisely, she could not for one moment
forget the little children waiting for her by her own hearthside or
the brave husband who was so often away on his long journeys to the
north; and the keen intelligence of the red men perceived this.

"She is ours no longer," said a venerable warrior, after one such
visit. "She has taken to herself a pale-face, he who met her on the
prairie in the morning light, and her heart has gone from her. It is
the way of life. The old passes, the new comes to reign. We are her
past. Her Dark-Eye is her present. Her papooses are her future. The
parting draws near. She is still the Sun Maid, the White Spirit, the
Unafraid. As far as the Great Spirit wills, she will be faithful to
us; but now when she rides homeward from a visit to our lodge it is no
longer at the easy pace of one whose life is all her own, but wildly,
swiftly, following her heart which has leaped before."

Each morning, nearly, as the Sun Maid ministered to her little ones or
busied herself among the domestic duties of her simple home she would
joyfully exclaim to Wahneenah:

"I don't believe there was ever a woman in the world so happy as I
am!" And the Indian foster-mother would gravely reply:

"Ask the Great Spirit that the peace may long continue."

Till, on one especial day, the younger woman demanded:

"Well, why should