amends for the humiliating fact. It may have been that among his
own people he would have restrained those utterances which declared his
agony, and borne the utmost with the stoicism of his race; but knowing
that civilization does not teach such outward indifference to pain, he
had adopted the surest means to reach the sympathy of the white
strangers; or, if we may conjecture still further, the consciousness of
the instinctive feud between the American and Caucasian race told him
that the plan he took was the only one that offered safety to himself.
What reason had he to believe that the hunters were kind of heart? If he
hid his distress, would he not be treated as a well Indian? And was
there any but the one common ground upon which the two races met?

But the fever had passed and he was himself again. True, he was still
feeble, and his limbs trembled at times like those of an old man; but
the disease had gone, and the stern, unbending will had resumed its
sway. He was not a child, but he was Shasta, the Pah Utah Indian.

The inexperience of Elwood Brandon and Howard Lawrence with these
strange people made this savage an enigma to them. As he stood with his
arms folded, his blanket wrapped around him, his long black hair
streaming over his shoulders, and the mingling of the paint on his crown
and over his face, and his midnight eyes fixed upon them, it was hard
indeed to conjecture the thoughts filtrating through his brain.

But there is a language in which the human heart can speak--that of
emotion. The boys felt no fear--ingratitude is not an element of the
savage character, though sad to say it is sometimes manifested among us
of greater moral pretensions.

He looked at them as they came up and paused a few feet from him.

"You seem to be better?" asked Elwood, feeling it incumbent that he
should make some remark, even though it was incomprehensible to their
dusky friend. He muttered something and then stretched out his arms as
if to show that he had recovered from his illness.

At this point Terror went up to the savage and snuffed around him, as if
to satisfy himself of his identity. The latter laid his hand upon his
knife and watched the dog narrowly, but he appeared to judge the animal
by the company, and quietly removed his hand and folded his arms again.

He stood thus a moment, when he pointed to the eastern shore and then
down the river, nodding his head and gesticulating somewhat excitedly.
The boys