ntinued during the dreadful weeks that
followed.

Until just before midsummer the nurses were almost wholly at the
Fort, where it seemed to Kitty that a "fresh case" and a "burial"
alternated with the regularity of a pendulum; and then a little relief
was gained by taking their sick across to Agency House and its ampler
accommodations. But even these were meagre compared to the needs; and
more and more as the days went by did the Sun Maid long for greater
wisdom.

"That is one of the things Gaspar and I must do. We must have a
regular hospital, such as are in Eastern cities; and there must be men
and women taught to understand all sorts of diseases and how to care
for them. I know so little--so little."

But experience taught more than schools could have done; and many a
poor fellow who had come from a far-away home sank to his last rest
with greater confidence because of the ministrations of these two
devoted women. And at last, very suddenly, there appeared one among
them whom both Wahneenah and her daughter recognized with a sinking
heart.

"Doctor! Oh, Doctor Littlejohn! I thought you were safe at the
'Refuge' with Mercy and Abel. How came you here? and why? You must go
away at once. You must, indeed. Where is the horse you rode?"

"I rode no horse, my dear. If I had asked for one, I should have been
prevented,--even forcibly, I fear. So I walked."

"Walked? In this heat, all that distance? Will you tell me why?"

But already, before it was spoken, the Sun Maid guessed the answer.

"Because, at length, through all the shifting talk about me, it
penetrated to my study-dulled brain that there was a need more urgent
than that the Indian dialects should be preserved; that I, a minister
of the gospel, was letting a woman take the duty, the privilege, that
was mine. I have come, daughter of my old age, to encourage the
sufferers you relieve and bury the dead you cannot save."

"But--for _you_, in your feebleness----"

He held up his thin white hand that trembled as an aspen leaf.

"It is enough, my dear. Consider all is said. I heard a fresh groan
just then. Somebody needs you--or me."

Wahneenah now had two to watch, and she did it jealously, at the cost
of the slight rest she had heretofore allowed herself. The result of
overstrain, in the midst of such infection, was inevitable. One
evening she crept languidly toward the empty house which had been her
darling's home and behind which still stood her own d