Its unusual paleness alarmed her; she held her own breath that she might distinguish the breathing of the child, but in vain. She placed her hand before its parted lips; the warm breath of infancy did not play upon it. She thought it strange; but death did not present itself to her mind. Going to the door of the lodge, she looked around, and saw her sister gazing, with fixed attention, towards the wigwam. This alarmed her, and she returned to her child; again she listened for its breath: she pressed its small and clammy hand. Then did the real truth flash across her. She took in her arms the infant and rushed with it into the open air. As she stood outside calling for help, the Indians collected around her. Her sister, calm and unconcerned, approached with them and looked on. The Indian doctors were there, and White Moon, under their direction, carried her child back to the lodge. She placed it on a buffalo-robe, which was folded on the floor. Red Head, the great medicine-man, seated himself near it. He held the sacred rattle, shaking it, and chaunting in a loud voice. He shouted to the women to stand off, for near him, on the ground, he had laid his pipe and medicine-bag. White Moon alternately wept and hoped; she knew Red Head was a powerful medicine-man: but still her baby showed no signs of life. Despairing, at last, and frantic with grief, she broke in upon his incantations. She raised her child, and placed its little face against her breast. She knew this test would be decisive. There was no motion, on its part, to receive the offered sustenance. She raised her despairing eyes, and they met the cold glances of her sister. Then she told Red Head there was no hope. She asked to be left alone with her dead; she wept until the power of weeping was gone: and then, until the time was come to place it in its cradle grave, she held it to her heart. She did not dare reflect on the passionate grief of the father, when he should return, and ask of her his son. She could not rouse herself to say, what she believed to be the case, that his sister had destroyed it. There was no mark,--no apparent cause for its sudden death. On returning to the wigwam, after the burial of the child, she found her sister there, more than usually bent upon an altercation. She endeavoured to avoid it by employing herself in silence. She eat for the first time since her child's death, and then applied herself to the task of finishing her lodge. Her bereaved condition might have excited the pity of her companion; but there was no sympathy in that breast. For a time, White Moon would not reply to her taunts. This the more enraged the other, who at length charged the heart-broken mother with the murder of her child!