Among other things, Mrs. Blake never tired of speaking of the great chief Black Hawk, and more particularly of his wife, whom she regarded with tender love. Black Hawk she thought a kingly man, and it was vastly to his honor, she maintained, woman-like and truly, that he had taken to himself but one wife, remaining faithful throughout to her whom he had won in his youth. "Were you greatly harassed by the war?" I asked her one day. "No, for at the commencement Black Hawk sent an Indian runner to us to say we would not be molested; nor were we." "How did he happen to do that?" I asked, surprised. "We had been neighbors; but it was quite like him, anyway, though he was much embittered at the last toward the whites because of their treachery and the wrongs of his people. Of all the Indian chiefs I ever saw," she went on, the color mounting to her face at the remembrance, "he was the most commanding, in amiability the greatest, in argument the most persuasive, and in anger the most terrible. I sometimes thought him vain, because on occasions of ceremony, and indeed at other times, it was his habit to adorn his person, savage-like, with garments of the most brilliant hue, encircling his head with feathers of glistening black and placing above them a plume of crimson red. Always, too, I thought, he was inclined to make much of his hereditary rank of king, but never in an offensive way." "You must have seen a good deal of him if you were neighbors?" I asked, interested, as I always was, in reference to everything that concerned him. "Yes, but more of his wife and children. They had a cabin near here, on the river-bank, hid away in the woods, which they used to visit, sometimes occupying the place for weeks at a time. It was not generally known, though, I think; and I have heard they came back there after they had been driven from the country, but we never saw them if they did." "Maybe they are there now," I answered, my blood stirred at the thought of being near the great chief. "No, I hardly think so; but since the old ferry was abandoned, communication has been cut off, so that they might be there and we not know it."