A kindly squaw, who was in sight, must have been touched by our helpless sorrow; for, when recovering, she was sprinkling my face with water from the bucket, and regarding me with looks of interest. Of course, we realized that this chance interview would be short, and, perhaps, the last that we would be able to enjoy, and, while my companion covered her face and wept, I told my name and the main incidents of my capture; and I dreaded to recall the possible fate of my Mary, lest I should rouse the terrible feelings I was trying to keep in subjection as my only hope of preserving reason. The young girl responded to my confidence by giving her own story, which she related to me as follows: “My name is Mary Boyeau; these people call me Madee. I have been among them since the massacre in Minnesota, and am now in my sixteenth year. My parents were of French descent, but we lived in the State of New York, until my father, in pursuance of his peculiar passion for the life of a naturalist and a man of science, sold our eastern home, and came to live on the shores of Spirit Lake, Minnesota. “The Indians had watched about our place, and regarded what they had seen of my father’s chemical apparatus with awe and fear. Perhaps they suspected him of working evil charms in his laboratory, or held his magnets, microscopes, and curiously-shaped tubes in superstitious aversion. “I can not tell; I only know that we were among the first victims of the massacre, and that all my family were murdered except myself, and, I fear, one younger sister.” “You fear!” said I. “Do you not hope that she escaped?” The poor girl shook her head. “From a life like mine death is an escape,” she said, bitterly. “Oh! it is fearful! and a sin to rush unbidden into God’s presence, but I can not live through another frightful winter. “No, I must and will die if no relief comes to me. For a year these people regarded me as a child, and then a young man of their tribe gave a horse for me, and carried me to his tipi as his wife.” “Do you love your husband?” I asked. A look, bitter and revengeful, gleamed from her eyes. “Love a savage, who bought me to be a drudge and slave!” she repeated. “No! I hate him as I hate all that belong to this fearful bondage. He has another wife and a child. Thank God!” she added, with a shudder, “that I am not a mother!” Misery and the consciousness of her own degraded life seemed to have made this poor young creature desperate; and, looking at her toil-worn hands and scarred arms, I saw the signs of abuse and cruelty; her feet, too, were bare, and fearfully bruised and travel-marked. “Does he ill treat you?” I inquired.