Retreat, the assembling of the command at sundown, came--the evening gun was fired, and the flag was lowered--and nothing was heard of the war-party, white or Indian. Tattoo had come, the soldier's bedtime, and our anxieties were not at rest. Towards twelve o'clock the men returned with their officer, without having had even a show of fight. To their intense mortification and disappointment, Red-boy had been seen, and talked with, large as life. He had eaten a saddle of venison that day, without any assistance, and was, accordingly, in a good state of preservation, having received no wound since the one of five years' standing, the scar of which he showed. Now, we know that among white people, as well as Indians, women have the credit of raising all the false reports, and circulating all the scandal that is going the rounds. Most unjust charge! and all men, red skins and pale faces, are defied to prove it. Among the Indians women have no chance whatever. Is an Indian charged with stealing pork from the traders? It was not the warrior who did it, but his wife. Has a party of Indians been admitted into the Fort, and some loaves of bread and pieces of meat been abstracted? Somehow or other the women are sure to be in fault. Has the garrison been alarmed, and a party of soldiers sent out uselessly? As usual, the women made the trouble. Yet, with a sigh from my heart, I must confess that appearances are against the sex. There were many threats of vengeance made against We-har-ka in the present instance, for the trouble which her longings for vengeance had occasioned; but she was not afraid: she had taken care of herself for nearly a hundred years, and would be apt to do so during the short remnant of her life. Indian women will talk of their wrongs as long as they feel them, and that will be until the heart has ceased to beat, and the tongue is silent for ever. We-har-ka lives on the memory of her sorrows. She holds them to her heart, as does the mother her child of a day old. They are dear to her as would be the hope of vengeance. I say she lives, but I know not. Seasons have gone since I bade adieu to her home, and it may be, she is all unconscious that winter is gone, and that summer's breath is waving the green boughs of the forest trees as they lift up their branches to the heavens. It must be soon, if not now, that her form, covered with garments of poverty and misery, and perhaps shielded from the gaze of passers-by by the tattered blanket of some friend poor as she, reposes quietly near the river bank. Would you not like to have heard her talk of her amusements as a child, and her happiness when a maiden--of the scenes of pleasure she remembers, and of terror from which she has fled--of the pains, the hunger, the watchings she has endured--of the storms and sunshine of a life passed away?