e creatures oftener talked of their parents
and Bessie, as they lay at night upon their beds of dried grass.

[Footnote 2: See American Adventure by Land and Sea. Harper Bros. 1842.]

[Footnote 3: _Wampum_. Beads made of shells, used by North American
Indians as money, the shells run on strings, and are wrought into belts
and ornaments.]

VIII.

BOUNCER'S WORK.

There was another person in the settlement besides the captives, who was
not likely to forget Bouncer very soon. This was an Indian who, wounded
and exhausted, had reached the settlement four days after the arrival of
the prisoners. He had an ugly mark upon his throat, and another on his
chest, and he sulked aside from the rest of his tribe as though he felt
that his wounds were ignoble, and a dishonor to his Indian birth. It was
his blood that Farmer Hedden had seen on that fearful night; and when
more than once the agonized father had listened to what seemed to be the
tread of some skulking wolf, he had heard this very Indian, who, half
dead with pain and loss of blood, was dragging himself slowly through
the depths of the forest.

This discomfited warrior had looked upon Tom and the two little
pale-faces with dislike, from the hour when he first saw them as
prisoners in the encampment. They were constant reminders to him of his
mortifying struggle with the dog. He felt it all the more because,
though his jacket and leggings were trimmed with the scalps of his
enemies, he had lately been forced to receive charity from the white
man's hand, This was when, starving and nearly frozen, he had fallen
helpless in the forest, after an unlucky trapping excursion; a settler
had found him there, given him food and drink and sent him on his way
with a bountiful supply of provisions.

Big Tom saw the dark looks of this Indian, and regarded him with
suspicion; but little Kitty was quite unconscious of the resentful
feelings of "the sick man," as she called him. In fact, as soon as she
grew more familiar with the Indians, she often sought him in preference
to the rest, and loved to sit upon the ground beside him, and trace
with her tiny fingers the patterns worked upon his leggings and
moccasins.

At first the grim warrior repulsed these familiarities; but when, as he
began to mingle with his tribe, he heard her sweet voice calling him by
name, and saw her day after day display her store of beads and feathers
at his feet, his feelings gradually softened. B