eserted lodge.
She was a little wearier than usual, she thought, but that was all. To
lie down on her bed of boughs and draw her own old blanket over her
would make her sleep. She longed to sleep--just for a minute; to shut
out from her eyes and her thoughts the scenes through which she had
gone. How long ago was it since the wagon and the fair-haired babies
went away?

She was a little confused. She was falling asleep, though, despite the
agony that tortured her. _Her?_ She had always hated pain and despised
it. It couldn't be Wahneenah, the Happy, crouching thus, in a cramped
and becrippled attitude. It was some other woman,--some woman she had
used to know.

Why, there was her warrior: her own! And the son she had lost! And
now--what was this in the parting of the tent curtains? The moonlight
made mortal?

No. Not a moon-born but a sun-born maiden she, who stooped till her
white garments swept the earth and her beautiful, loving face was
close, close. Even the glazing eyes could see how wondrously fair it
was in the sight of men and spirits. Even the dulled ears could catch
that agonized cry:

"Wahneenah! Wahneenah! My Mother! Bravest and noblest! and yet--a
savage!"

"Who called her so knew not of what he spake. From one God we all came
and unto Him we must return. Blessed be His Name!" answered the
clergyman who had followed.

Then the frail man, who had so little strength for himself, was given
power to lift the broken-hearted Maid and carry her away into a place
of safety.

CHAPTER XXII.

GROWING UP.

"Well, I'm beat! I don't know what to do with myself. Out there to the
clearing I was just crazy wild to get back to town; and now I'm here
I'm nigh dead with plumb lonesomeness. My, my, my! Indians licked out
of their skins, about, and cleared out the whole endurin' State. Old
Black Hawk marched off to the East to be shown what kind of a nation
he'd bucked up against, the simpleton! And Osceolo takin' himself and
his pranks, with his tribe, clear beyond the Mississippi; an' me an'
ma lived through watchin' them little tackers of Kit's--oh, hum! I'd
ought to take some rest; but somehow I 'low I can't seem to."

Mercy looked up from the unbleached sheet she was hemming and smiled
grimly.

"Give it up, pa. Give it up. I've been a-studyin' this question, top
and bottom crust and through the inside stuffin', and I sum it this
way: _It's in the soil!_"

"What's in the soil? The shakes? or the h