ointers, and he helped her in driving the Shawanoe into a corner,
where he could not otherwise extricate himself.

The wonderful thing in the estimation of the good woman was that the
hero of these and many other exploits was a _Christian_. She had never
seen one of his race who professed to be a follower of the Meek and
Lowly One, though she had heard of such from the missionaries; but she
agreed with her son that no more perfect exemplar of Christianity was
to be found anywhere.

On the morrow, when the time came to part, Mrs. Halloway took the hand
of Deerfoot in her dainty palm, and in a trembling voice thanked him
for what he had done for her through what he did for her son. She
promised to pray for him every day of her remaining life, and while he
stood trying to keep back the tears she added:

"Please bend your head a little."

He bent down and she touched her lips to his forehead, and, still
holding the hand, said so that all, Jack, the Shelton boys and Dick
Burley, could hear, as they gathered round to say the parting words:

"Well done, good and faithful servant!"

The benison thus bestowed remained with Deerfoot all the way home and
to the end of his life. In the cool depths of the forest, amid the
fragrance of brown leaves, the bark of trees and of bursting bud and
blossom, and by the flow of the crystal brook, he heard the gentle
whisper. It came to him when the snow sifted against his frame and the
bite of the Arctic blast was as merciless as the fangs of the she-wolf.
Above the crash of the hurricane that uprooted and splintered the
century-old monarchs of the woods the words rang out like the notes of
an angel's trumpet, and in the watches of the night, under the
star-gleam or in the fleecy moonlight, while stillness brooded over a
sleeping world, the music swung back and forth like a censer through
the corridors of the soul, with a sweetness that told him the strings
of the harp throbbed under the touch of the fingers of God himself.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

RETROSPECT.[2]

"I am the son and only child of Taggarak, a leading war chief for many
years of the Blackfoot Indians. I had an elder brother, but he died
before reaching manhood. I remember the visit made by Deerfoot the
Shawanoe to our tribe, in the autumn and winter of 1804 and 1805. He
came from Ohio, in company with two brothers named Shelton, that were
white, and with Mul-tal-la, who belonged to our own people, and had
made the jou