trusted Prairie, while she mourned. "I was so sure of Dewdrop, John, I used to smile securely and say, O, yes! why not?' when people doubtingly inquired if our red-brown girlie was contented in her civilized home, and if she was truthful and sweet-tempered, quick to learn, nice in her ways, and fond of books and work. All this our little Indian maid must be, however white girls miss perfection, because the world was looking on, expecting me to fail in my experiment with a daughter of the outcast race. My little loving Dewdrop! Why did she wish to leave us?' Why, because she is a born barbarian." said Aunt Abigail, coming in with Prairie's father. The tidings of Piokee's flight had burst on them at the breakfast-table through a herder from the ranch, and they had dropped their knives and forks to hasten over. ""Tisn't to be wondered at one jot or tittle, and the child herself is not to blame for wanting to become a wandering minstrel, if she has joined the peddler's orchestra. What else can be expected of the offspring of a race that has been gadding back and forth from Dan to Beersheba ever since the family of Noah were let out of the ark? An Indian would rather live on pounded acorns and be free to roam the universe, than eat plum pudding from a china saucer as a prisoner within four walls. I hope she took her overshoes and winter flannels, and some salve and liniment in case of accident. It stands to reason that she didn't take a trunk, if she stole off horseback in the night." "There seems to be the deepest mystery about the whole affair," said Prairie's father. "I have looked on Dewdrop as a model girl in all respects, my daughter, and have thought your marked success with her a singular triumph over race and antecedents. Has she shown in any way of late that she was growing tired of her quiet life?" 66 "I have thought, within the last two weeks, that she seemed a little restless," answered Prairie; "but I didn't once think she was tired of home. Only yesterday she came and stole her arms about my neck, and said it was the sweetest home in all the world, and asked me if I truly loved my red-brown girlie. Then she went out riding, and came back so still and strange I thought she must be ill." 66 Meddlesome old maids don't need a spyglass to discern a mountain from a molehill,” said Aunt Abigail, shooing down the kitten that was crawling up her back, and straightening her spectacles to hide her agitation; I was sure that there was something wrong, and if this family hadn't been as blind as a whole nest of bats, you might have set a watch upon the child and saved the whole calamity." Aunt Sweetbrier, who had gone upstairs directly after breakfast, now came back with a slip of paper in her hand. "Here, dear," she said to Prairie," is a little note we overlooked. I found it pinned to her pillow, on the under side." Paairie seized it eagerly, and with a tremor in her voice read the parting message, written in a clear, round, girlish hand : "The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.'" The Navajoe's blankets saved Piokee actual suffering on her journey to the Reservation. Fauqua spared one blanket from her scanty camping outfit, and with this she made a tiny wicky-up in which Piokee, wrapped in the Navajoe's blankets, curled herself night after night, the parents sleeping near her in some leafy hollow sheltered from the wind. Fortunately for the wayworn girl, the breast of Mother Earth, on which she laid her tired head at night, was tender with the warmth of sunlit days, and thus the long hard jaunt of scores of miles, which occupied well-nigh a week, was made with less discomfort than Piokee had anticipated. Scattered through the timber were the pecan gatherers, girls and women crouching on the ground in odd fantastic groups, vigilantly searching for the nuts among the leaves. To the younger boys belonged the task of climbing to shake down what nuts were on the trees; but like their sires and elder brothers idling by the camp fire over in the semi-circle of the tents, most of them disdained to work, and roamed the woods at will with squirrel club and bow and arrow. Up-a-tree, who was a champion climber and had thereby gained his name, was shinnying up a sycamore trunk, clinging like a treetoad to the slick white bark. The resemblance was the more complete as Up was dressed from top to toe in gunny-sacks, from which Piokee had evolved a shirt and pair of trousers in the greatest haste on her arrival at the Reservation, to clothe the almost naked little fellow. "What are you thinking, tiny still-tongue? asked Piokee, studying the weirdly solemn little face. "Are you wondering what makes a truly great man — red, or white, or black matter what the color of his skin? Feeling big doesn't make him so, for the bigger he feels the smaller he is sure to be. He needn't have a tall form, nor strong muscles, nor swift feet though my chief has all those but he must be strong, and wise, and beautiful inside not too grand to think of tender little ways for helping others, yet grand enough to never dread to do the very hardest thing himself. My chief is a truly great Indian, Nanno." Piokee had grown talkative since coming to the Reservation. The placid silence she so often kept at home amid the cheerful chit-chat of the household was no longer possible, and she must bravely fight against the dull despair that would have held her voiceless in the presence of this dreary people who had called her back to them. Since she could no more hear the dear familiar language from the lips of those she loved, she talked it to herself and Fauqua, and, taking hold of Nanno with a yearning grasp, she told the child her inmost thoughts, and sometimes fancied that the little “If Up would only climb the pecans, instead of sycamores and cottonwoods, he might shake down the nuts, and risk his bones for something useful,” sighed Piokee, watching with fear and trembling the wiry little acrobat performing perilous evolutions in the tree-top. "Up-a-tree say he not work like girl. Grow shy still creature understood her meaning. up big Injun," Fauqua said. She was balancing against a pecan-tree a rough precarious ladder she had made by whittling notches in two long slim poles, and winding grape-vines back and forth across them for a brace. Up this she was about to crawl, with crotched pole in hand, to shake the lower branches of the tall pecan. "We must try to teach him better," said Piokee patiently. "Up will have to change his ways and go to work like smart little Nanno, or he'll never make a truly great Indian whom Nanno and I will be proud to call our brother." Nanno was squatted in a queer round heap on the ground stirring up the leaves for nuts. Dropping down beside the little worker, Piokee took the small rough hands between her own soft palms and held them tenderly. The child looked up as if in wonder at this marvelous "Trees cry," said Fauqua, coming down to shift the ladder to another spot, and standing still to listen to the rising wind. "Storm come." "Well, let it come," Piokee answered; and she set her teeth against the wind. "Up can hover round the tent fire, as he has no shoes or jacket, and has lost the cap I made him. I'm thankful Nanno has a warm long coat and hood and leggings." With the help of Fauqua, who was really skilled with the needle, though like many civilized women she had plied it hitherto in fancywork alone, Piokee had comfortably clothed her little sister from a half-worn blanket she had cleansed and made into a suit. Nanno rubbed her hands down her red coat, gazing at another little girl near by, whose only garment was a tattered calico frock. Was Nanno wishing that this child, with all the other little reservation gypsies, had a civilized elder sister to invent new ways to keep them warm, to gently wash their hands and faces, comb their tousled hair, and kiss and cuddle them at unexpected times? "Poor little shivering thing!" exclaimed Piokee, following Nanno's glance. "And there are so many more like her because their mothers haven't learned the way. It seems as if the whole world, if it only knew, would go to work to help them. And I thought you Up has left a piece of one leg hanging to the tree. I shall have to patch it with a flour sack, and he will have a Best Flour' label running round his leg in red, white and blue. Won't that look too funny, Nanno? If you don't laugh at that, I shall surely have to shake and tickle you until you do." Nanno kept her eyes still fixed reflectively on Piokee's face. "I care,' she murmured, in a curiously unchildish tone, finding her speech at length. "DROPPING DOWN BESIDE THE LITTLE WORKER, PIOKEE TOOK THE SMALL HANDS BETWEEN HER OWN." wouldn't miss me, Nanno, because you'd never known me. I wonder which we miss more, what we've had and loved and lost, or what we've never had and have so sadly needed?" The sole response to this query was a sharp whoop above, and with a whirl of arms and legs, Up parted from a sycamore branch, and alighted on the ground. With an elfish grin peculiar to himself, he seized his squirrel club, and darted off in search of new exploits. "Dear me!" Piokee said, "I thought wild horses couldn't tear those canvas trousers, but Of Nanno's few intelligible words, gathered from her parents' broken English, "I care" came oftenest from her lips. "Poor little soul! exclaimed Piokee, catching Nanno in her arms. "You needn't care, you mustn't care, you are too young to care. Dear me, I'd like to be a fairy with the power to whisk you out of life a single instant, and bring you back a happy, laughing little girl, like Miriam and the other children in that lovely world you've never seen." Piokee almost lost her voice; but swallowing the big lump in her throat, she fell to work picking up the nuts that Fauqua had brought down. While thus engaged, she felt that she was being pelted with nuts, but looking round could not at first discover whence they came. There was a group of girls beneath a tree not far away, from which a half-grown boy, more gallant than his fellow youngsters off on the hunt, was shaking nuts. Despite Piokee's friendly smiles, the girls had kept aloof from her thus far, staring, some in half-shy wonder, some in open envy at her neat attire that had not yet begun to show the wear and tear of roughing it. This bright-faced, soft-eyed girl of their own. race, with gentle voice and manner, clad in civilized gown and jaunty outing cap and ulster, was a revelation to these gypsy maids. They themselves were dressed in calico short-gown skirts and leggings, having faded shawls or blankets hugged about them for a wrap, and covering their unkempt heads. As Piokee glanced toward them, one and all seemed gravely occupied in gathering the nuts and dropping them into the bags suspended from their necks. No sooner had she turned back to her own employment, however, than the nuts again began to pelt her. One sharply struck her cheek. Looking round a second time, she saw the unkempt heads turn quickly from her, and a sly smile skip from face to face. She now felt sure these girls had thrown the nuts; she was startled at the thought that they had done this in a spirit of petty persecution which might soon become more open. The youngster in the tree appeared to be enjoying the mischief with the girls, and was peering down on Piokee, slyly curious how she would receive the challenge. He was surprised to see her smilingly walk over to the nutters, and flitting lightly round among them, open each one's bag with a caressing little movement to drop therein a handful of her own nuts as a good-will offering. The girls made no resistance; but in return ing to her tree Piokee heard a low ejaculation. and a short laugh, whether in derision or good nature she could not determine. The pelting ceased, however, and the pacified besiegers held a muttered parley. After some demur from their companions, two of them came shyly over to return the offering with a double handful of their nuts. They knew no word of English, nor could Piokee speak the Indian language, but the friendly, helpful spirit of the civilized girl, reaching out to these less fortunate young sisters of her tribe, needed no interpretation. Meantime, over in the semi-circle of the tents, where the old and young men smoked their pipes before the camp fire, something of the deepest interest was going on. A party of wild-looking strangers had arrived in camp that afternoon, to be received with most unusual ceremony. Other visitors in noiseless, hurrying squads kept riding in, until the camps were outnumbered thrice over. Boys were sent the rounds to call the women to the tents to cook a feast with reckless hospitality. Injuns hold big council. Talk ghost dance," said Fauqua, hauling down her ladder, and hoisting it upon her back. "Oh!" said Piokee, with a thrill of dread, "I didn't think there was any danger of our tribe joining in the ghost dance. They have not been on the war-path for so many years." War-path still there. Messiah lead Injun on," was Fauqua's ominous reply. 66 (TO BE CONTINUED.) Theodora R. Jenness. The Text She Liked. MEN AND THINGS. Small Madeline is something of a humorist, and has no very pronounced religious tendencies, but the other day she came home from church in a highly-pleased frame of mind. Dexterous Cats. Emma Carleton. The One winter we began to find the door leading from the dining-room into a small summer kitchen, mysteriously open on the coldest mornings. The pres ence of our two cats in the dining-room on these occasions excited no remark until some one, in fun, charged the cats with the opening of the door. suggestion once made, circumstantial evidence was speedily collected sufficient to cause the cats to be watched. The larger of the two, a big blue-gray pussy with white vest and slippers and a most owllike countenance, was soon detected in the trick. The door in question swung from the dining-room into the kitchen, being fastened only by an ordinary mortise latch turned by a smooth porcelain knob. To this outer kitchen the cats had free access. It appeared that whenever Billy desired to get to warmer quarters, he would stretch himself up from the floor, cross his fore paws over the stem of the knob, deftly throwing his weight in the right direction to turn the latch. Sometimes a second or even a third effort would be required. When the latch was loose, the door swung toward the cat, but he slipped out of the way with ready agility. We were not a little curious to find out how the cat thought of the trick, which was surely his own invention. Beside the door in the kitchen, stood a box from the top of which he could easily reach the knob. It seemed probable that some day while Billy was impatiently pawing this knob, in his anxiety to get in, it turned and the door opened. Yet when all possible allowance has been made for the element of accident, a considerable margin is left which can only be bridged by admitting that the cat was capable of association of ideas obtained by observation. We do not know how many futile attempts were made in learning, but by the time we found out the culprit he had become so expert that a lock had to be put on the door, which remains to this day as a testimony to a cat's hand-skill. More recently, Dick, a cat of the same general appearance as Billy, has accomplished a feat which we think even more remarkable. The big door of the woodshed swings outward, being fastened inside with a stout hook which falls into a staple driven into the inside corner of the doorpost. This door was repeatedly found open under the most puzzling circumstances. The hook was too high for the largest cat to reach from the doorsill; besides, "how could a cat lift a hook?" was the incredulous query which greeted the one who first ventured to say "cat" in that connection. However, remembering Billy, we watched our opportunity, and this is what we saw. Starting on some steps opposite the door and about ten feet distant, Dick ran with all his might, like a boy preparing for a jump; the impetus so gained carried him up the door post (rough scantling) and at the right instant he knocked the stem of the hook upward with his doubled-up paw, which he used precisely as you or I would use our doubled fist, thrusting with sufficient force to throw the hook clear of the staple. The hook having dropped, the door opened of itself. A little swinging door having been made for Dick's convenience, we were no more annoyed with woodshed doors mysteriously unhooked. S. F. G. Easter Bouquets. The Easter bouquet of the Irish at the present day, bears a strong resemblance to the two yellow irises depicted by Leonardo da Vinci in his interesting paintings of the Infant Christ. It consists of a spherical ball of primroses, carefully tied together, and in the center is placed a white six-petaled anemone, or pasque. In Warwickshire, England, they have very similar bouquets, except that the plume of the anemone is supplied by a branch of the palm-willow. In the celebrated painting referred to, the Infant Christ is represented as standing between two yellow irises; that on the sinister side with the petals downward, apparently to represent the humanity or humiliation of Christ, while that on the dexter side had the petals upward, implying the divinity, or glorification. |