for eternity in the bosom of that silent son of the prairie, who, for the first time, had attended Christian worship,--no one knew. Tom could not induce him to attend again, and yet he did not seem offended at what he had heard; but when his white friend alluded to it, his eye gleamed with a new light, and his face looked thoughtfully, doubtfully serious. Nearly every day Tom and Long Hair were together, the latter keeping but little in the wigwam, and seldom going with the other Indians. When they filed into town, and besieged the houses, trying the doors, peeping into the windows, accosting the street-passers, Long Hair was not with them; and when at evening they returned exultant from a successful hunt, singing their strong-lunged song of triumph,--their wild and scarcely human "Hi yar! hi yar!" growing nearer, till, entering the village, they sang their way through to their lodge, Long Hair was not of their number. One day Tom, chancing to visit the wigwam, found Long Hair there, shivering with a violent attack of ague. He was alone, and had been for two days. How bare and cheerless appeared the Indian's life to Tom's sympathetic nature then! for an Indian, when sick, has few comforts. Solitary he sits wrapped in his blanket, or lies on the ground, with no one to nurse or care for him; no nice dishes to tempt his feeble appetite, no hand to bathe his fevered brow, no medicines to assuage his pain or drive disease away. "Why, Long Hair," cried Tom, "why didn't you let me know that you were sick?" But Long Hair sat shaking in his blanket, and, as usual, heard, but made no answer, only with his expressive eyes. Tom brought in wood, and started the fire, and saying, "Mother'll know just what to do for you, Long Hair; I'll go and tell her how you are," he ran to his mother's cabin, and, quickly making some nourishing gruel, and putting up a store of simples that she used in fever and ague, she returned with Tom to the lodge. What a treasure is a loving, experienced woman in sickness, whether in a palace, a log house, or beneath the rude shelter of an Indian's moving home--ever gentle, exhaustless in resources, untiring in her ministrations! It seemed a marvel to Tom how readily his mother knew just what to do for Long Hair, intuitively adapting herself to his Indian peculiarities; and, for the week that his illness lasted, she nursed him with great tenderness, often remarking to Tom,-- "He is one of God's children, Tom; for the Bible says, 'God has made of one blood all the nations of men to dwell upon the face of the earth,' and Jesus died for the red man as much as for the white." Through all this womanly care of him by Mrs. Jones, and brotherly attention of Tom, the Indian, while shivering with the chill, or burning and panting with the fever, made no acknowledgments of kindness shown him, or uttered a word of complaint as he suffered, and, when he recovered, returned in silence to his Indian occupations.