y moss
and grass lay upon the ground; and the little squaw pointed with one of
her silent laughs to a collection of broken egg-shells, where some wild
duck had sat and hatched her downy brood among the soft materials which
she had found and appropriated to her own purpose. The only things
pertaining to the former possessor of the log-hut were an old, rusty,
battered tin pannikin, now, alas! unfit for holding water; a bit of a
broken earthen whisky jar; a rusty nail, which Louis pounced upon, and
pocketed, or rather pouched,--for he had substituted a fine pouch of
deer-skin for his worn-out pocket; and a fishing-line of good stout
cord, which was wound on a splinter of red redar, and carefully stuck
between one of the rafters and the roof of the shanty. A rusty but
efficient hook was attached to the line, and Louis, who was the finder,
was quite overjoyed at his good fortune in making so valuable an
addition to his fishing-tackle. Hector got only an odd worn-out
mocassin, which he chucked into the little pond in disdain; while
Catharine declared she would keep the old tin pot as a relic, and
carefully deposited it in the canoe.

As they made their way into the interior of the island, they found that
there were a great many fine sugar maples which had been tapped by some
one, as the boys thought, by the old trapper; but Indiana, on examining
the incisions in the trees, and the remnants of birch-bark vessels that
lay mouldering on the earth below them, declared them to have been the
work of her own people; and long and sadly did the young girl look
upon these simple memorials of a race of whom she was the last living
remnant. The young girl stood there in melancholy mood, a solitary,
isolated being, with no kindred tie upon the earth to make life dear to
her; a stranger in the land of her fathers, associating with those whose
ways were not her ways, nor their thoughts her thoughts; whose language
was scarcely known to her, whose God was not the God of her fathers.
Yet the dark eyes of the Indian girl were not dimmed with tears as she
thought of these things; she had learned of her people to suffer, and be
still.

Silent and patient she stood, with her melancholy gaze bent on the
earth, when she felt the gentle hand of Catharine laid upon her arm, and
then kindly and lovingly passed round her neck, as she whispered,--

"Indiana, I will be to you as a sister, and will love you and cherish
you, because you are an orphan gi