"If you had to die," he said once, looking up into the face of his odd, shy friend Mr. Toots, "don't you think you would rather die on a moonlight night, when the sky was quite clear, and the wind blowing, as it did last night? Not blowing, at least, but sounding in the air like the sea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. When I had listened to the water for a long time, I got up and looked out. There was a boat over there, in the full light of the moon--a boat with a sail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the distance, and it seemed to beckon--to beckon me to come." Poor little Paul! It was not long before he obeyed the fancied summons, for soon after this visit to the sea-shore the gentle, loving little fellow died--died with his arms about his sister's neck; and almost his last words were, as he smiled at his mother's spirit waiting to bear him to heaven: "Mamma is like you, Floy. I know her by the face." THE TALKING LEAVES.[2] An Indian Story. BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD. CHAPTER III. [2] Begun in No. 92 of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, August 2. "Talking leaves?" said Ni-ha-be, as she turned over another page of the pamphlet in her lap, and stared at the illustrations. "Can you hear what they say?" "With my eyes." "Then they are better than mine. I am an Apache. You were born white." There was a little bit of a flash in the black eyes of the Indian maiden. She had not the least idea but that it was the finest thing in all the world to be the daughter of Many Bears, and it did not please her to find a mere white girl, only Indian by adoption, able to see or hear more than she could. Rita did not reply for a moment, and a strange sort of paleness crept across her face, until Ni-ha-be exclaimed: "It hurts you, Rita! It is bad medicine. Throw it away." "No, it does not hurt." "It makes you sick?" "No, not sick. It says too much. It will take many days to hear it all." "Does it speak Apache?" "No, not a word." "Nor the tongue of the Mexican pony men?" "No. All it says is in the tongue of the blue-coated white men of the North." "Ugh!" Even Ni-ha-be's pretty face could express the hatred felt by her people for the only race of men they were at all afraid of. There were many braves in her father's band who had learned to talk Mexican-Spanish. She herself could do so very well, but neither she nor any of her friends or relatives could speak more than a few words of broken English, and she had never heard Rita use one. "There are many pictures." "Ugh! Yes. That's a mountain, like those up yonder. There are lodges, too, in the valley. But nobody ever made lodges in such a shape as that." "Yes, or nobody could have painted a talking picture of them." "It tells a lie, Rita. And nobody ever saw a bear like that." "It isn't a bear, Ni-ha-be. The talking leaf says it's a lion." "What's that? A white man's bear?"