During all this time Mr. Payson had been so occupied in benevolent labor among those whose cabins had been flooded, that it had not occurred to him that he had sustained any damage; but, after the subsiding of the waters, as he took his way down his favorite path through the grove, he saw that the waters had borne away every vestige of fencing around his cherished ten-acre lot. The highest part of the fence had been under water many feet on that calamitous night, and with the loss of the rails had gone down another of the earthly props on which he had leaned for his daily bread in the wilderness. CHAPTER XIII. THE INDIAN LODGE. Spring on a north-western prairie. What a glorious scene! Suddenly, you scarcely know when, the snow has disappeared, leaving the long, dead grass lying in matted unsightliness, and you would think it was dead forever; but soon, in little clusters of from three to seven, you see dotting the landscape a purple flower, a tough, membranous, hairy sheath protecting each floweret from the chilling winds, for it opens at once to your gaze. Then, as the weather waxes genial, the blossoms shoot up from their hirsute guardianship, and nod brightly in the breeze. It is the "spring beauty,"--as the frontier folk call it,--the first vegetation of the season, presenting the phenomenon of rich blooming flowers, while yet the lifeless turf shows no signs of vitality. But life is there; for at once, as if by magic, the whole expanse is green with verdure, growing with marvellous rapidity, decked with flowers. "Garden without path or fence, Rolling up its billowy blooms." Then you rise some soft morning, and the air is vocal with the cooing of myriad birds. If you are just from the east, you will think that thousands of turtle doves are announcing that spring has come. They seem close about you; but you cannot see them. They are not in the groves near by; you follow the sounds through the waving prairie grass for a long distance, and you find them not, and will be surprised when your western friend tells you that these are the voices of the prairie hens, miles away, holding their annual convention, the queer cuckooing not being loving sounds, but notes of war--abortive attempts at crowing, which the rival males set up as they prepare to do battle with each other. And now from the blue expanse overhead come down the varied cries of the migratory birds returning from the south. Line upon line of wild geese, in military order, follow their leader, while the trumpet blasts of the sand-hill cranes--the ostrich of the American prairie--ring out clear and shrill, and their long white bills glisten in the sunlight from afar, like bristling bayonets of ivory.