The priest walked slowly to the scene of death. Why was he not there before with the cross and the holy oil? Ah! the war-chief was no subject for the Jesuit faith--he had worshipped too long Wakinyan-Unk-ta-he to listen to the words of the black robe. There were no baptisms, no chauntings of the mass here; there was no interest at stake to induce the haughty Sioux to the necessity of yielding up his household gods. They were not a weaker party warring with the French, and obliged from motives of policy to taste the consecrated wafer. Contrasted with the Indian's ignorance was his native dignity. When Father Blanc told them there was but one religion and that was the Roman Catholic, and that the time would come when all would be subject to the man who was in God's place upon the earth, who lived at Rome, then would the Sioux laugh, and say, "As long as the sun shines, the Dacotas will keep the medicine feast." In vain were the pictured prayer-book and the holy relics exhibited. What were they to the tracks of Haokah the giant, or the gods' house, under the hill which reared itself even to the clouds, under which the gods rested themselves from their battles. The priest wept when he thought of the useless sacrifice he had made: he could not even gain the love of the strange beings for whose sake he had endured so much. They were not like the Abnakis, "those men of the east," who so loved and obeyed the fathers who sojourned among them. And the useless life he was leading, how long might it last? Restrained, as the Sioux were, only by the laws of hospitality and the promise they had made to the Indians who conducted him hither, how soon might these influences cease to affect them? We-har-ka alone spoke gently and kindly to him. She knew that his heart, like hers, vibrated beneath a load of care; she found too a strange interest in his stories,--the woman's love of the marvellous was roused; the miracles of the saints delighted her as did the feats of the gods. But only so far was she a Christian; though she wore a gift from the Jesuit, the consecrated sign. Perhaps in the after accounts of his converts she was reckoned among them. We are told by one of the Jesuit fathers of the true conversion and Christian death of a Canada Indian. "While I related to him," said he, "the scene of the crucifixion, 'Oh! that I had been there,' exclaimed the Indian, 'I would have brought away the scalps of those Jews.'" The war-chief was arrayed in his choicest clothing; and, but for the silence in the wigwam, and the desolate appearance of the young person who was alone with her dead, one would have supposed that he slept as usual. The charms were still to be left about his person for protection. The body was wrapped in skins: they were as yet laid but loosely about him, ready for their final arrangement, when, with the face towards the rising sun, the warrior should be laid upon the scaffolding, to enjoy undisturbed repose.