ould hear them saying, "Poor fellow! We have sat up
too long for him, and he has fallen asleep on the cold ground."

About a year after he was adopted, Alder met that poor mother, whose
little one the Indians had cruelly murdered before her eyes. "When she
saw me, she came smiling, and asked if it was me. I told her it was. She
asked me how I had been. I told her I had been very unwell, for I had
had fever and ague for a long time. So she took me off to a log, and
there we sat down; and she combed my head, and asked a great many
questions about how I lived, and if I didn't want to see my mother and
little brothers. I told her I should be glad to see them, but never
expected to see them again. We took many a cry together, and when we
parted, took our last and final farewell, for I never saw her again."

Alder always remained delicate, and could not thrive on the Indians'
fare of meat and hominy, with no bread or salt; of sugar and honey there
was plenty; but he missed the things he was used to at home. When he
grew older he was given a gun, and sent hunting, and whenever he came
back with game the Indians praised his skill and promised him he should
be a great hunter some day. He continued with them until the peace of
1795, which followed Wayne's victory, and even then he stayed for a time
in the region where he had dwelt so long. He had married a squaw,
and had become a complete Indian, so that the first settlers in his
neighborhood had to teach him to speak English. But he did not live
happily with his Indian wife; they agreed to part, and then Alder
thought of going back to his own people. He reached the house of one of
his brothers in the neighborhood of his old home, one Sunday afternoon,
and found several of his brothers and sisters there, and his mother with
them. They could scarcely be persuaded that it was their son and brother
come back to them, and he had to tell them of some things that no one
else could know before they would believe him. His old, white-haired
mother whom he remembered in her youth with a "head as black as a crow,"
was the first to take him in her arms, and she said, as she wept over
him, "How you have grown! I dreamed that you had come to see me, but
you was a little _ornary_-looking fellow, and I would not own you for my
son; but now I find I was mistaken, that it is entirely the reverse, and
I am proud to own you for my son."

[Illustration: Alder returns to his Family 141]

In 1792, M