Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 44, June, 1861», страница 5
THE ROSE ENTHRONED
It melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow
To adamant beneath the house of life:
In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go
To meet intenser strife.
And ere that fever leaves the granite veins,
Down thunders o'er the waste a torrid sea:
Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns,—
Immortal foes to be.
Built by the warring elements, they rise,
The massive earth-foundations, tier on tier,
Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes
Their hideous heads uprear.
The building of the world is not for you
That glare upon each other, and devour:
Race floating after race fades out of view,
Till beauty springs from power
Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death
Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun;
The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath
Of richer life begun,—
Richer and sweeter far than aught before,
Though rooted in the grave of what has been.
Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth's floor,
Ere she her heir shall win;
And ever nobler lives and deaths more grand
For nourishment of that which is to come:
While 'mid the ruins of the work she planned
Sits Nature, blind and dumb.
For whom or what she plans, she knows no more
Than any mother of her unborn child;
Yet beautiful forewarnings murmur o'er
Her desolations wild.
Slowly the clamor and the clash subside:
Earth's restlessness her patient hopes subdue:
Mild oceans shoreward heave a pulse-like tide:
The skies are veined with blue.
And life works through the growing quietness
To bring some darling mystery into form:
Beauty her fairest Possible would dress
In colors pure and warm.
Within the depths of palpitating seas
A tender tint;—anon a line of grace
Some lovely thought from its dull atom frees,
The coming joy to trace;—
A pencilled moss on tablets of the sand,
Such as shall veil the unbudded maiden-blush
Of beauty yet to gladden the green land;—
A breathing, through the hush,
Of some sealed perfume longing to burst out
And give its prisoned rapture to the air;—
A brooding hope, a promise through a doubt
Is whispered everywhere.
And, every dawn a shade more clear, the skies
A flush as from the heart of heaven disclose:
Through earth and sea and air a message flies,
Prophetic of the Rose.
At last a morning comes of sunshine still,
When not a dew-drop trembles on the grass;
When all winds sleep, and every pool and rill
Is like a burnished glass
Where a long-looked-for guest may lean to gaze;
When day on earth rests royally,—a crown
Of molten glory, flashing diamond rays,
From heaven let lightly down.
In golden silence, breathless, all things stand.
What answer meets this questioning repose?
A sudden gush of light and odors bland,
And, lo! the Rose! the Rose!
The birds break into canticles around;
The winds lift Jubilate to the skies:
For, twin-born with the rose on Eden-ground,
Love blooms in human eyes.
Life's marvellous queen-flower blossoms only so,
In dust of low ideals rooted fast.
Ever the Beautiful is moulded slow
From truth in errors past.
What fiery fields of Chaos must be won,
What battling Titans rear themselves a tomb,
What births and resurrections greet the sun,
Before the rose can bloom!
And of some wonder-blossom yet we dream,
Whereof the time that is infolds the seed,—
Some flower of light, to which the rose shall seem
A fair and fragile weed.
A BAG OF MEAL
I often wonder what was the appearance of Saul's mother, when she walked up the narrow aisle of the meeting-house and presented her boy's brow for the mystic drops that sealed him with the name of Saul.
Saul isn't a common name. It is well,—for Saul is not an ordinary man,—and—Saul is my husband.
We came in the cool of an evening upon the brink of the swift river that flows past the village of Skylight.
The silence of a nearing experience brooded over my spirit; for Saul's home was a vast unknown to me, and I fain would have delayed awhile its coming.
I wonder if the primal motion of unknown powers, like electricity, for instance, is spiral. Have you ever seen it winding out of a pair of human eyes, knowing that every fresh coil was a spring of the soul, and felt it fixing itself deeper and deeper in your own, until you knew that you were held by it?
Perhaps not. I have: as when Saul turned to me in the cool of that evening, and drew my eyes away, by the power I have spoken of, from the West, where the orange of sunset was fading into twilight.
I have felt it otherwise. A horse was standing, surrounded by snow; the biting winds were cutting across the common, and the blanket with which he had been covered had fallen from him, and lay on the snow. He had turned his head toward the place where it lay, and his eyes were fixed upon it with such power, that, if that blanket had been endowed with one particle of sensation, it would have got up, and folded itself, without a murmur, around the shivering animal. Such a picture as it was! Just then, I would have been Rosa Bonheur; but being as I was, I couldn't be expected to blanket a horse in a crowded street, could I?
We were on the brink of the river. Saul drew my eyes away, and said,—
"You are unhappy, Lucy."
"No," I answered,—"not that."
"That does not content me. May I ask what troubles you?"
I aroused myself to reason. Saul is never satisfied, unless I assign a reason for any mood I am in.
"Saul!" I questioned, "why do the mortals that we call Poets write, and why do non-Poets, like ourselves, sigh over the melancholy days of autumn, and why are we silent and thoughtful every time we think enough of the setting sun to watch its going down?"
"Simply because the winter coming is cold and dreary, in the one case,—and in the other, there are several reasons. Some natures dread the darkness; others have not accomplished the wishes or the work of the day."
"I don't think you go below the surface," I ventured. "It seems to me that the entire reason is simple want of faith, a vague uncertainty as to the coming back of the dried-up leaf and flower, when they perish, and a fear, though unexpressed, that the sun is going down out of your sight for the last time, and you would hold it a little longer."
"Would you now to-night, Lucy?"
"If I could."
My husband did not speak again for a long time, and gradually I went back into my individuality.
We came upon an eminence outside the river-valley, and within sight of the village.
"Is it well? do you like it?" asked Saul.
The village was nested in among the elms to such a degree that I could only reply,—
"I am certain that I shall, when I find out what it is."
Saul stayed the impatient horse at the point where we then were, and, indicating a height above and a depth below, told me the legend of the naming of his village.
It was given thus:—
"A long time ago, when the soundless tread of the moccason walked fearlessly over the bed of echoes in this valley, two warriors, Wabausee and Waubeeneemah, came one day upon the river, at its opposite sides. Both were, weary with the march; both wore the glory of many scalps. Their belts were heavy with wampum, their hearts were heavy with hate. Wabausee was down amid the dark pines that grew beside the river's brink. Waubeeneemah was upon the high land above the river. With folded arms and unmoved faces they stood, whilst in successive flashes across the stream their eyes met, until Wabausee slowly opened out his arms, and, clasping a towering tree, cried out, 'I see sky!' and he steadfastly fixed his gaze upon the crevices of brightness that urged their way down amid the pines over his head.
"Waubeeneemah turned his eyes over the broad valley, and answered the cry with, 'I see light!'
"Thus they stood, one with his eyes downward, the other with his intent on the sky, and fast and furious ran the river, swollen with the meltings of many snows, and fierce and quick rang the battle-cries of 'I see sky!' 'I see light!'
"A white man was near; his cabin lay just below; he had climbed a tree above Waubeeneemah and remained a silent witness of this wordy war, until, looking up the river, he saw a canoe that had broken from its fastenings and was rushing down to the rapids below. It contained the families of the two warriors, who were helplessly striving against the swift flow of waters.
"The white man spoke, and the warriors listened. He cried, 'Look to your canoe! and see Skylight!'
"Through the pines rushed Wabausee, and down the river-bank Waubeeneemah, and into the tide, until they met the coming canoe, across whose birchen bow they gave the grasp of peace, and ever since that time Indian and white man have called this place Skylight."
"Where are the Indians now?" I could not help asking,—and yet with no purpose, beyond expression of the thought question.
The shadows were gathering, the eyelids of the day were closing. Saul caught me up again through the shadows into those eyes of his, and answered,—
"Here, Lucy! I am a pale form of Waubeeneemah! I know it! I feel it now!
I sometimes ache for foemen and the wilds."
Why do I think of that time to-night on the Big Blue, far away from Skylight, and imagine that the prairie airs are ringing with the echoes of the great cries that are heard in my native land, "I see North!" and "I see South!" and there is no white man of them all high enough to see the United States?
I've wandered! Let me think,—yes, I have it! My thought began with trying to fancy Saul's mother taking him to baptism.
She was dead, when I went to Skylight, her son's wife.
She went into the higher life at thirty-three of the threescore-and-ten cycle of the human period. How young to die!
The longer we live, the stronger grows the wish to live. And why not? When the circle is almost ended, and all the momentum of threescore-and-ten is gained, why not pass the line and enter into second childhood? What more beautiful truth in Nature's I Am, than obedience to this law?
I've another fancy on the Big Blue to-night. It is a place for fancies. I remember—a long time ago it seems, and yet I am not so old as Saul's mother—the first knowledge that I had of life. I saw the sun come up one morning out of the sea, and with it there came out of the night of my past a consciousness. I was a soul, and held relations separate from other souls to that risen sun and that sea. From that hour I grew into life. A growth from the Unseen came to me with every day, born I knew not how into my soul. I sent out nothing to people the future. All came to me.
Is this true, this faith or fancy that God sends a tidal wave through man, bringing with it from Heaven's ocean fragments set afloat from its shore to lodge in our lives, until there comes an ebb, and then begin our hopes and desires all to tend heavenward, or elsewhere? Have you never felt, do you not now feel, that there is more of yourself somewhere else than there is upon the Earth?
I like to think thus, when I see a person ill, or in sorrow, or weighed down with weary griefs. I like to think that that which is ebbing here is flowing and ripening into fitness for the freed soul in that land where there shall be "no more sea."
In insanity, does the kind Lord remove all from this world in order to fit up the new life more gloriously? and are those whom most we pity clasped the closest in the Living Arms?
It may be,—there is such comfort in possibilities.
Will Saul come to-night? I am all alone on the Big Blue. There's not another settled claim for miles away.
The August sun drank up the moisture from our corn-fields, took out the blood of our prairie-grasses, and God sent no cooling rains. Why?
Skylight was charmful for a while. I had forgotten Saul's assertion that he was a pale shadow of Waubeeneemah, as we forget a dream of our latest sleep.
At my home Aunt Carter appeared one day, and said she had "come to spend the afternoon and stay to tea"; and she seated her amplitude of being in Saul's favorite chair, and began to count the stitches in the heel of the twenty-fourth stocking that she assured me "she had knit every stitch of since the night she saw my husband lift me down at the gate just outside the window." Her blue eyes went down deeper and deeper into the bluer yarn her fingers were threading; and after a long pause, during which I had forgotten her presence, and was counting out the hours on the face of the clock which the slow hands must travel over before Saul would be at home, suddenly she looked up and began with,—
"Mrs. Monten!"
There was something startling in her voice. I knew it was the first drop of a coming flood, and I fortified myself. She went on repeating,—
"Mrs. Monten! I've been thinking, for a great long while, that it isn't right for you to go on living with that man, without knowing what he is. And I for one have got up to the point of coming right over here and telling you of it to once."
I could not help the involuntary question of—
"Is my husband an evil man?"
"Evil! I should think he might be, when he has got"–
"Stay, Mrs. Carter!" I interrupted. "I will hear no news of my husband that he does not choose to give me. Only one question,—Do you know of any action that my husband has done that is wrong or wicked?"
Aunt Carter forgot her blue eyes and her bluer yarn, for she stopped her knitting, and her eyes changed to gray in my sight, as she ejaculated,—
"He's got Indian blood in him! I should think you'd be afraid he'd scalp you, if you didn't do just as he told you to. Everybody in Skylight is just as sorry for you as ever they can be."
Aunt Carter paused. An open door announced my husband's unexpected presence.
Aunt Carter rolled up her twenty-fourth twin of a stocking, and, hastily declaring that "she'd always noticed that 't was better to visit people when they was alone," she made all possible effort to escape before Saul came in.
My husband an Indian! I looked at him anew. He wore the same presence that he did when first I saw him, a twelve-month before. There was no outward trace of the savage, as he came to welcome me; and I forgot my thought presently, as I listened to his words.
"I am tired of this life," he said; "let us go."
"Where, Saul?"
"Anywhere, where we can breathe. I feel pent up here. I long to hunt something wild and free as I would be. Shall it be to the prairies, Lucy?"
"Will you live on the hunt?" I asked.
"I had not thought of that. No; I'll build you a"–And he paused.
I laughed, and added,—
"Let us have it, Saul. A wigwam?"
"Why not?"
"Why not, indeed, Saul? I am content,—let us go."
On the morrow I began the work of preparation. I was sitting upon the carpet, where I had cast all our treasures of knowledge, in the various guises of the printer's and binder's art, and was selecting the books that I fondly thought would be essential to my existence, when Saul came in.
He looked down upon me with that look that always drinks up my sight into his, and said,—
"You are sorry to go, Lucy. I will stay."
"No, Saul, I wish to go. You shall teach me the pleasures of wild life; and who knows but I shall like it so well that we will give up civilization for it? Where shall I pack all these books?"
"Leave them all," he said. "We will close the house as it is, until we come back." And I left them all at home.
In the heart of these preparations an insane desire came into my mind to know something of Saul's ancestors, and there was but one way to know, namely, by asking, which I would not do of human soul. Thus it came to pass that I was driven out, between this would of my mind and wouldn't of my soul, to search for some knowledge from inanimate things. The last night before our departure I became particularly restless and unsatisfied. I went to the place of burial of the villagers, where I found duly recorded on two stones the names of Saul's parents, Richard Monten and Agnes Monten, his wife.
There was nothing Indian there, and I went home once more to the place that had been so happy until the spirit of inquiry grew stronger than I. That night I watched Saul, until he grew restless, and asked me why I did so.
I evaded direct reply, and on the morrow we were wheeling westward.
From the instant we left the line of man's art, Saul became another person. All the romance and the glory in his nature blossomed out gorgeously, and I grew glad and gay with him. We crossed the Missouri. We traversed the river-land to Fort Leavenworth, amid cottonwoods, oaks, and elms which it would have done Dr. Holmes's heart and arms good to see and measure.
"Will you ride, Lucy? will you try the prairie?" asked Saul, the morning following our arrival in Fort Leavenworth.
I signified my pleasure, and mounted a brave black mustang, written all over with liberty. We had ridden out the dew of the morning, and for miles not one word had been spoken, the only sound in the stillness having been the hoofs' echo on the prairie-grass, when Saul rode close to me, and, laying his hand on my pony's head, spoke in a deep, strange voice that put my soul into expectancy, for I had heard the same once before in my life.
"Lucy," he said, "I sometimes think that I have done a great wrong in taking you into my keeping; for I must accept these calls to wildness that come over me at intervals."
"Have you ever been here before?" I asked.
"Twice, Lucy, I have crossed the American Desert, and lain down to sleep at the foot of the Rocky Mountains."
"You are not going there now?" I almost gasped.
"Why not? Can't you go with me?"
Oh, how my spirit recoiled at the thought of the Desert! Wild animals processioned through my brain in endless circles. All the stories of Indian ferocity that ever I had heard came into my consciousness, as it is said all the past events of life do in the drowning, and I had no time to hesitate. The decision of my lifetime gathered into that instant. Saul or nothing; and bravely I answered,—did I not?—when, with brightening eyes, I said, "Let us on!"—and shaking the hand from my saddle-bow, I gave my prairie friend leave to fly.
"Lucy! Lucy!" cried Saul, and he soon overtook me,—"Lucy, I sought you as the thirsting man seeks water on the desert; and I have sought to bless you, almost as Hagar blessed the Angel,—almost as the devout soul blesses God, when it finds a spring that He has made to rise out of the sands. Having found you, I was content. I thought that I could live always, as other men do, in the tameness of Town and Law; but I could not, unless you refused to go with me into the Nature that my spirit demands as a part of its own life."
"Saul, you know that you can go without me,—else I should not wish to go. I go, not because I am a necessity to you, but a free-born soul, that wills to go where you go."
The grave Professor (for I whisper it here to-night, with only the wind to hear, that Saul is a Professor in a famed seat of learning not many leagues away from the Atlantic coast) looked down at me with a vague, puzzled air, for an instant, then said,—
"I see! It is so, Lucy. You have divined the secret. I am not to let you know that I cannot live without you,—and, if you can, you are to make me think that you only tolerate me."
"What of it? Isn't it almost true? I sometimes think, that, if ever we are in heaven, effort to remain there will be necessary to its full joy. We are always crying for rest, when effort is the only pleasure worth possessing."
"You are right, and you are wrong. Let us leave mental philosophy with mankind, who have to do with it. Just now, I am willing to confess that I need you, and you are to do as you will. Come! let us look into this thicket."
And leading the way, Saul rode presently under a tall cotton wood-tree, and, lifting for me the low-hanging branches of a black-jack, I entered an amphitheatre whose walls were leaves of living green domed in blue, with a river-aisle winding through.
I had not time to take in all the joy of the circle, before it was evidenced that Saul had premeditated the scene. A fire of twigs sent up a spicy perfume. A camp-kettle stood beside the fire, and a creature stood beside it. A yellow savage I should have said, but for my husband's welcome. Never in our home library did brother-professor ever receive warmer grasp of hand than I knew this Indian met. They used words, in speaking, that were unknown to me. Presently I perceived that an introduction was pending. That being over, the Indian, Meotona, pointed to a swinging-chair, built for me out of the wealth of grapevine. It was cushioned with the velvet of the buffalo-grass.
"Tell me how to thank him," I said to Saul.
Meotona immediately replied,—"Me no thank,—him," pointing to Saul.
I laid my sun-wearied head against the vine, and through half-closed eyes watched in delicious rest the preparations for dinner. My prairie-horse mistook my comfort for his own. I found his length of liberty included my chair-cushion, and I gave him tuft after tuft, until something like justice seemed to penetrate into his soul,—for he heroically refused the last morsel, and wandered away into the next arc of his liberty.
"If all the days are to be like this, how delicious it will be!" I said, as Saul came to me with choice bits of prairie fare.
"Not this," he said. "Wait until we hunt the buffalo!—that wakes up the spirit of man!"
"But I am not a man, and you must excuse me from hunting buffalo," I could not help saying, as I slid out of the grapevine chair to the grass, beside Saul; for verily, I believed that he had forgotten that I was a woman, and a child of the Puritans.
No more words were spoken until our repast was over. Meotona gathered up the furniture of our dining-room, and with us returned toward Fort Leavenworth. The summer sun was setting when we drew near the Missouri. I thought I had disappointed Saul. At the last moment I ventured to ask,—
"Why did you return? I would have gone on. I wished it."
My husband's face lit into a quick smile, then gloomed as quickly, and he said,—
"I smile at your simplicity in imagining that I ventured out, without consulting you, for the Rocky Mountains. I frown to think that my wife believes that I could go into danger with her, and only one right arm to defend her. No! I went to-day to try you. I couldn't ask you within any four-walled shelter. I wanted the wide expanse to be your only shield before I could trust you. I wanted you to face the foe. Again I ask, Shall we go? Answer from your own individuality, not mine."
"I will go."
It was the spirit that spoke; for neither heart nor flesh could have braved the fancied dangers.
A week went by, and every moment of the time Saul was elate and busy, providing for me in every possible way, devising comforts that exceeded my imagination, remembering every idiosyncrasy that I had given expression to in his hearing. Under the guard of the United States mail, we left Fort Leavenworth. Meotona, the yellow savage, went with us. Oh, the delight of those days! it comes to me now, and I almost forget that I am alone on the Big Blue, and that those hours have gone down among "the froth and rainbows" of the past, bearing with them a part of my life. There were nights when I was afloat in the bark of my spirit, and wandering up and on, until I met Half-Way Angels that bade me back to Earth; and then I would wander away into dreams, watched by the stars and Saul,—for in those first days he never wearied in his care. By day I wandered through a garden of flowers untended by man, whose only keepers were butterflies and birds. Indian faces and forms no longer made me tremble. I grew to see beauty in them, as they dashed by the train, intent on the hunt.
We encamped beside Stranger Creek, on the banks of the Wakarusa, and on the Great Divide separating the Osage from the Wakarusa Valley.
After we left Council Grove, Meotona, I noticed, was on the watch, constantly peering off into the illimitable distance. One day I learned the cause. An exclamation from the Indian led me to look at him. For once, fire flashed out of his eyes,—he had forgotten himself. He was in ecstasy as he saw a party advancing over the prairie.
"Here they come! Now for the heart of the wilderness!" exclaimed my husband, as they rode up.
"We are not going away from the guard?" I ventured to suggest, as chief after chief came up. I knew them in their wild orders, having by this time learned something of Indian customs. They were equipped for the Plains, and among their number I distinguished two white men.
"I know them,—they are safe and true, Lucy,—fear nothing!" whispered Saul close to my whitening cheek; and afterwards we turned aside from the Santa Fe trail to the north of the American Desert.
My husband did not leave me for an instant that afternoon; and I, simple-minded woman, tried to look as happy—well, as a woman and a professor's wife could look under the circumstances. The wings of my tent that night were spread to the breeze that swept low and cool across the Divide.
The next day we came to the lodges of the Indians. Swarthy-faced girls and women came to greet us. It was evident that many of them had never before seen a white woman. As evening came on, I noticed in one group outside the principal lodge an unusual amount of grimace that was incomprehensible, until, very timidly, a little girl left the crowd. Half-way toward me she stopped and turned back, but again the violent gesticulations were enacted, when the child made a sudden evolution in my direction, and with one hard finger rubbed the back of my hand, until I thought myself quite a Spartan; then looking at her own finger, doubtfully at first, she ran back, and went from one to another, showing her finger. The design was evident. Indians (the women, at least) have some curiosity;—they thought me painted white. I forgave them.
We went five hundred miles from this lodge into the wilderness,—two of the squaws accompanying us, for my comfort.
At last came the sight of buffaloes, feeding on the short tufts of grass on the Grand Prairie. My heart grew sick with the shout that rang from a hundred Indian throats, and—must I write it?—from Saul's.
"Stay!" said Saul, and he left me a guard, and was away without one word of farewell.
Night came down, and he was not returned. The stars shone out of the vault like "red-hot diamonds," and on the sight no vision, to the ear no sound.
The women pitched my tent. The guard lit the fire. They brought me savory bits of food, and coffee. My throat was tightened, I could not eat, and I arose and went out into the night alone. I lost all sense of fear, as I wandered away. The prairie had just been burned, and I knew must be free from serpents and other reptiles: beyond these I had no thought. I turned once to see the little dot of fire-light, to see the one point of canvas, my shelter and my home. At last I grew very weary, and remember having lain down, and having thought that the stars were raining down upon me, so near did they seem,—and one after one, constellation mingled with constellation, until I fancied a storm of stars was circling over my head.
I started with a sudden spasm, as a sound burst upon me, wild, ringing, dreadful. A hundred Indians were uttering a war-cry, and, as I lay there, with my head pressed to the burnt sod, I felt the shudder of earth from many hoofs. I turned in the direction whence they were coming;—raise my head from the ground I dared not. All was darkness. Could I possibly escape? Not if I moved. Where I was, there might be a chance that they would pass to the right or the left. On, on they came, and I knew the cry,—it was for vengeance. Feebly, like a setting star, gleamed the watch-fire of my guard in the distance. Suddenly it went down. They had heard the alarm. How awfully my heart kept time to the nearing echo of the many footfalls! My eyes must have been fastened on the West. I saw dark heads rise first above the earth-line, then the moving arms of the horsemen. I heard the ring of weapons, and saw them coming directly over the place where I lay; but I did not stir,—it was as if I had been bound with an equator to the ground. Something struck my arm and was gone. The troop passed by.
It was morning. A low, deep breathing betokened something near me. I opened my eyes, and saw the face of my husband,—but, oh, how changed! I heard him say, "The Lord hear my vow, and record my prayer!"
All that day I lay there, on the prairie, Saul sitting beside me, shielding me from, the sun, and giving me drops of coolness, which the Indians pressed from herbs and shrubs that grew not far away. I was in a dream, and when the stars arose they lifted me up and bore me away. I knew it was to the eastward. I felt no resistance in my nature, as I always do when going to the west, either voluntarily or otherwise. We came, after many days, to the Indian lodge. I never saw the guard again, that I left in peace, when I was driven out to wander, because I felt wretched and lonely to be deserted for the chase by my husband. They were carried into captivity by the hostile Sioux. There was mourning in the lodge. An Indian mother, whose daughter had gone with me, sat down in the ashes of sorrow, and moved not for two days; then she arose, and, scattering dust from the earth toward the setting sun, she went into her wigwam and they gave her food.
It was September before I was able to leave the place whither they carried me. My arm was cut with the hoof of the flying horse, and when Saul found me, I had fainted; I was dying from loss of blood, which his coming only had stayed. After I grew stronger, I closely observed my husband.
I never saw such an ache, such a strife, as week after week hunting-parties went out in the morning and returned at evening with their game. Saul grew reserved and silent when I begged him to go, to leave me for a day.
"It is of no use, Lucy; I made a vow, and I must keep it. This Indian blood within me must be subdued; it has met a stronger current on the way, and must mingle with it."
He said no more on the subject, and I would not question him. We took our last walk on the prairie. Everything was in readiness for our departure to meet the expected United States mail-train. We returned to the lodge, and Saul left me for a few minutes to make some last arrangements with Meotona. An old Indian woman, whose eyes I had often noticed on me, crept stealthily in at my tent-door, and said to me in English,—
