The time came when it was decided that Mary and I should go back to Lac-qui-parle. The four years since we left had brought many changes. They had been years of discouragement and hardship all along the line. The brothers Pond had built among the people of their first love--the old Lake Calhoun band, now located a short distance up from the mouth of the Minnesota. There they had a few who came regularly to worship and to learn the Way of Life. But the mass of the people of Cloud Man's village were either indifferent or opposed to the Gospel of Christ. At Lac-qui-parle, where had been the best seed-sowing and harvesting for the first seven years, the work had gone backward. Bad corn years had driven some of the native Christians to take refuge among the annuity Indians of the Mississippi. Temptations of various kinds had drawn away others--they had stumbled and fallen. Persecutions from the heathen party had deterred others, and some had fallen asleep in Christ. Among these last was Mr. Joseph Renville, who had stood by the work from the beginning. He had passed away in the month of March; and thus the Lac-qui-parle church was reduced to less than half its members of four years ago. Out of this church there had gone a half a dozen or so, chiefly women, down to Kaposia, or Little Crow's village, which was on the Mississippi, a few miles below the site of St. Paul. Through them, more than any other influence perhaps, there came an invitation, from Little Crow and the head men of the village, to Dr. Williamson, through the Indian agent at Fort Snelling, to come down and open a school and a mission. This application was considered at the meeting of the Dakota mission held at the Traverse, and the voices were in favor of acceptance. But if Dr. Williamson left Lac-qui-parle, that involved the necessity of our returning thither. This proposition Mary could not entertain willingly. True, the work at the Traverse had been full of hardships and suffering, but the very sufferings and sorrows, and especially that great first sorrow, had strongly wedded her affections to the place and the people. It was hard to leave those Oaks of Weeping. She could not see that it was right; still, she would not refuse to obey orders. And so the month of September, 1846, found us travelling over the same road that we had gone on our first journey, just nine years before. Then we two had gone; now we had with us our four little ones, but it was a sad journey. The mother's heart was not convinced, nor was it satisfied we had done right, until some time after we reached Lac-qui-parle. MARY'S STORY. "TRAVERSE DES SIOUX, Sept. 17, 1846. "This is probably the last letter I shall write you from this spot so dear to us. If I could see that it was duty to go, it would cheer me in the preparations for our departure, but I cannot feel that the interests of the mission required such a sacrifice as leaving this home is to me.