for fear of meeting Watson's fate. I was spared
the necessity of deciding. I fainted and fell to the ground. They found
me, and proved kinder than I anticipated.

"Why they should have molested us I know not. There is something in it
that I do not understand."

But it is easily explained. Sullen Face supposed them to belong to the
party that had killed his friends, and through this error he had shed
innocent blood.

CHAPTER IV.

Who that has seen Fort Snelling will not bear testimony to its beautiful
situation! Whichever way we turn, nature calls for our admiration. But
beautiful as it is by day, it is at night that its majesty and
loveliness speak to the soul. Look to the north, (while the Aurora
Borealis is flashing above us, and the sound of the waters of St.
Anthony's Falls meets the ear,) the high bluffs of the Mississippi seem
to guard its waters as they glide along. To the south, the St. Peter's
has wandered off, preferring gentle prairies to rugged cliffs. To the
east we see the "meeting of the waters;" gladly as the returning child
meets the welcoming smile of the parent, do the waves of the St. Peter's
flow into the Mississippi. On the west, there is prairie far as the eye
can reach.

But it is to the free only that nature is beautiful. Can the prisoner
gaze with pleasure on the brightness of the sky, or listen to the
rippling of the waves? they make him feel his fetters the more.

I am here, with my heavy chain!
And I look on a torrent sweeping by.
And an eagle rushing to the sky,
And a host to its battle plain.

Must I pine in my fetters here!
With the wild wave's foam and the free bird's flight,
And the tall spears glancing on my sight,
And the trumpet in mine ear?

The summer of 1845 found Sullen Face a prisoner at Fort Snelling.
Government having been informed of the murder of Watson by two Dahcotah
Indians, orders were received at Fort Snelling that two companies should
proceed to the Sisseton country, and take the murderers, that they might
be tried by the laws of the United States.

Now for excitement, the charm of garrison life. Officers are of course
always ready to "go where glory waits" them, but who ever heard of one
being ready to go when the order came?

Alas! for the young officer who has a wife to leave; it will be weeks
before he meets again her gentle smile!

Still more--alas for him who has no wife at all! for he has not