In the spring of 1844, Robert and Agnes Hopkins came down from Lac-qui-parle, and, for the next seven years, were identified with the missionary work at Traverse des Sioux. The opposition to our remaining gradually died away and was lived down. Louis Provencalle, the trader, _alias_ Le Bland, had probably tried to carry water on both shoulders, but he was thoroughly converted to our friendship by an accident which happened to himself. The old gentleman was carrying corn, in strings, into his upper chamber by an outside ladder. With a load of this corn on his back, he fell and caught on his picket fence, the sharp-pointed wood making a terrible hole in his flesh. For months I visited him almost daily and dressed his wound. He recovered, and, although he was not the less a Romanist, he and his family often came to our meetings, and were our fast friends. Perhaps some seeds of truth were then sown, which bore fruit in the family a score of years afterward. Thus we had, occasionally, an opportunity to help a fellow white man in trouble. It was one Saturday in the early part of September, while we were at work on our school-house, that an Indian runner came in from Swan Lake, to tell us that a "ghost" had come to their camp. A white man had come in in the most forlorn and destitute condition. The story is well told by Mary in her letters home. "TRAVERSE DES SIOUX, Oct. 10, 1844. "We have just returned in safety, after spending a week very pleasantly and profitably at Lac-qui-parle. An armed force, from Forts Snelling and Atkinson, have recently passed up to Lake Traverse, to obtain the murderers of an American killed by a Sisseton war-party this summer. "The circumstances of the murder were very aggravating, as communicated to us by the only known survivor. A gentleman from the State of Missouri, Turner by name, with three men, were on their way to Fort Snelling with a drove of cattle for the Indians. Being unacquainted with the country, they wandered to the north-west, when they were met by a war-party of Sisseton Sioux, returning from an unsuccessful raid upon the Ojibwas. Finding them where they did, on their way apparently to the Red River of the North, they supposed they belonged to that settlement, with whom they had recently had a quarrel about hunting buffalo. And so they commenced to treat these white men roughly, demanding their horses, guns, and clothes. One man resisted and was killed, the others were robbed. Shirts, drawers, hats, and vests were all that were left them. Some of the cattle were killed, and the rest fled. One of the Americans, with some Indians, were sent after them, but he made his escape, and was never heard of again. The next morning, the other two were permitted to leave, but the only requests they made, for their coats, a knife, and a life-preserver, were not granted.