Whom we lend our moccasins red, Them we show how the erring are sped. Whom we lend our coronals green, Them we show how the erring are seen, When the right begins to fall, Hearts must bleed or lost is all." They who watched from above--for, by this time, many were there with Elster--had scarcely drawn the long, full breath, which follows a moment of breathless suspense, when the father, bearing a burden in his arms, reappeared at the base of the precipice. They called to him and pointed to the path that led obliquely around the hill, as being that by which he should ascend. A moment he paused and ran his eye along the circuitous way; but looking upward again to the group above him, and seeing Elster leaning over the dizzy brink, with arms outstretched, in piteous eagerness to clasp their loved one again to her heart, he paused no longer. To their unspeakable amazement, right up that huge and difficult steep, all burdened as he was, came the bold, strong man, with steps so light and swift that his ascent appeared as smooth and uninterrupted as the gliding shadow of a flying bird. Bold and strong, indeed, but that were a feat, if not beyond all human courage to dare, at least beyond all human strength to perform. "Oh! God of Love!" exclaimed the mother, as the father gained the summit. "But our child is dead! Our child is dead!" And with a piteous moan, the poor heart swooned away. Kind hands stayed her fall, and taking her up and bearing her into the fort, there laid her on a bed in grandpap's house. The same kind hands took the boy, whom, up to this moment, the father had held tenderly clasped to his rugged breast; took and laid him beside his senseless mother, his garments all torn to tatters and red with blood, which still trickled from many a wound. "After all, the child may not be dead," said a kind voice--young Ben Logan's mother. "See how he bleeds." And she laid her hand upon the unheaving breast, in the forlorn hope of finding the heart still beating. Then, after a moment of suspense, came the joyful announcement: "It beats! It beats! The child still lives!" The cry aroused the mother to consciousness. Clasping her child to her bosom, in an agony of pitying love and hopeless sorrow, again and again she cried: "Oh! God of Love! But our child is dead!" "No, Elster, dear, your darling is not dead," said another kind voice--little Bertha Bryant's mother. "Give him to us and we will wash and lave his wounds and bind them up with healing salves. See how freely they bleed. That could not be the case if he were dead."