y a will, not all his own, and sustained by a
power, no more his own than had he been a child in his father's arms,
the father followed the dog, making his way in the same zig-zag manner
adown the perilous hill, till, in the dusky shadows at its base, he,
too, had plunged. A few long, rapid strides, and he was at the spot
whence Pow-wow's joyful barks had continued to resound. What found he
there? The body, indeed, of his child; but whether as a waif unto life,
or as a prize unto death--it were hard to tell. Stretched out on the
ground, all ghastly it lay; the head toward him, and just beyond the
naked feet--adjusted side by side, with their old air of easy
self-assurance, the Manitou moccasins. As the father approached, the
elfish little horrors, fetching a summerset aloft, as he had seen them
do the time before, plumped themselves directly between him and his
child, though vanishing the moment they touched the ground. But, with
the vanishing, came a voice of more than mortal tenderness, and with the
voice a perfume of more than earthly sweetness.

"Jervis Whitney--

Whom we lend our moccasins red,
Them we show how the erring are sped.
Whom we lend our coronals green,
Them we show how the erring are seen,
When the right begins to fall,
Hearts must bleed or lost is all."

They who watched from above--for, by this time, many were there with
Elster--had scarcely drawn the long, full breath, which follows a moment
of breathless suspense, when the father, bearing a burden in his arms,
reappeared at the base of the precipice. They called to him and pointed
to the path that led obliquely around the hill, as being that by which
he should ascend. A moment he paused and ran his eye along the
circuitous way; but looking upward again to the group above him, and
seeing Elster leaning over the dizzy brink, with arms outstretched, in
piteous eagerness to clasp their loved one again to her heart, he paused
no longer. To their unspeakable amazement, right up that huge and
difficult steep, all burdened as he was, came the bold, strong man, with
steps so light and swift that his ascent appeared as smooth and
uninterrupted as the gliding shadow of a flying bird. Bold and strong,
indeed, but that were a feat, if not beyond all human courage to dare,
at least beyond all human strength to perform.

"Oh! God of Love!" exclaimed the mother, as the father gained the
summit. "But our child is dead! O