Even then, as it afterward appeared, Julia was entering upon the incipient stages of pulmonary consumption. She was not careful of herself. After teaching school until one o'clock, she was ever ready to go with the agent's daughters to interpret for them in the case of some sick person, or to relieve the wants of the poor. Before I left, in March, her cough had become alarming. And so it increased. The second summer after this, she was obliged to stop work, and simply wait for the coming of the messenger that called her to the Father's house above. CHAPTER XVII. 1870-1871.--Beloit Home Broken Up.--Building on the Sisseton Reserve.--Difficulties and Cost.--Correspondence with Washington.--Order to Suspend Work.--Disregarding the Taboo.--Anna Sick at Beloit.--Assurance.--Martha Goes in Anna's Place.--The Dakota Churches.--Lac-qui-parle, Ascension.--John B. Renville.--Daniel Renville.--Houses of Worship.--Eight Churches.--The "Word Carrier."--Annual Meeting on the Big Sioux.--Homestead Colony.--How it Came about.--Joseph Iron Old Man.--Perished in a Snow Storm.--The Dakota Mission Divides.--Reasons Therefor. The spring of 1870 brought with it a breaking-up of the Beloit home. Some months before Mary's death, she had invited to our house an invalid niece, the daughter of her older sister, Mrs. Lucretia Cooley. A dear, good girl Mary Cooley was. She had during the war acted as nurse, in the service of the Christian Commission. But her health failed. It was hoped that a year in the West might build her up. After her aunt had gone from us, Mary Cooley remained with us. But the malady increased; and this spring her brother Allan came and took her back to Massachusetts. And now, only a little while ago, we heard of her release in California, whither the family had removed. The good Lord had compassion upon her, and took her to a land where no one says, "I am sick." Then the house was rented. The household goods and household gods were scattered, the major part being taken up into the Indian country. Anna would spend the summer with friends in Beloit, and Cornelia, the youngest, I took up to Minnesota, and left with Martha on the frontier. My plan was to put up two buildings, a dwelling-house and a school-house, for the erection of which the committee at Boston had appropriated $2800. That may seem quite an amount; but the materials had to be transported from Minneapolis and the Red River of the North. What I purchased at Minneapolis was carried by rail and steamboat one hundred and fifty miles. There remained one hundred and thirty, over which the lumber was hauled in wagons in the month of June, when the roads were bad and the streams swimming. And so the cost was very great,--dressed flooring coming up to $75 per 1000 feet, dressed siding $65, shingles about $15 per 1000, and common lumber $60 a thousand feet.