he present scene.

"The Siouxes are in council on my brother," the trapper at length
observed, when he found he could only attract the other's attention by
speaking.

The young partisan turned his head with a calm smile as he answered
"They are counting the scalps over the lodge of Hard-Heart!"

"No doubt, no doubt; their tempers begin to mount, as they remember the
number of Tetons you have struck, and better would it be for you now,
had more of your days been spent in chasing the deer, and fewer on the
war-path. Then some childless mother of this tribe might take you in the
place of her lost son, and your time would be filled in peace."

"Does my father think that a warrior can ever die? The Master of Life
does not open his hand to take away his gifts again. When He wants
His young men He calls them, and they go. But the Red-skin He has once
breathed on lives for ever."

"Ay, this is a more comfortable and a more humble faith than that which
yonder heartless Teton harbours. There is something in these Loups which
opens my inmost heart to them; they seem to have the courage, ay, and
the honesty, too, of the Delawares of the hills. And this lad--it is
wonderful, it is very wonderful; but the age, and the eye, and the limbs
are as if they might have been brothers! Tell me, Pawnee, have you ever
in your traditions heard of a mighty people who once lived on the shores
of the Salt-lake, hard by the rising sun?"

"The earth is white, by people of the colour of my father."

"Nay, nay, I speak not now of any strollers, who have crept into the
land to rob the lawful owners of their birth-right, but of a people who
are, or rather were, what with nature and what with paint, red as the
berry on the bush."

"I have heard the old men say, that there were bands, who hid themselves
in the woods under the rising sun, because they dared not come upon the
open prairies to fight with men."

"Do not your traditions tell you of the greatest, the bravest, and the
wisest nation of Red-skins that the Wahcondah has ever breathed upon?"

Hard-Heart raised his head, with a loftiness and dignity that even his
bonds could not repress, as he answered--

"Has age blinded my father; or does he see so many Siouxes, that he
believes there are no longer any Pawnees?"

"Ah! such is mortal vanity and pride!" exclaimed the disappointed old
man, in English. "Natur' is as strong in a Red-skin, as in the bosom of
a man of white gifts. Now would a