Indian; and after thinking the matter over for a week, during which time he smoked an unusual number of pipes of tobacco, he came to the conclusion that the girl had been bewitched by one of the strange priests. Calling her to him, he questioned her as to the cause of her altered behavior; and from her downcast face and embarrassed replies he quickly surmised her secret. The Smile of the Morning loved the fair young priest, and it was for his sake that her tears flowed. The old chief at first scoffed at her infatuation, and bade her take up with one of her dusky suitors. But the girl was obstinate; and finally yielding to her whim, the old chief himself offered his daughter’s hand to Fra Antonio. The young priest, in holy horror, took counsel with his superiors; and it was explained to the chieftain that though the white soldiers were free to mate with the maidens of the tribe, the priests were vowed to celibacy. If the pious young priest had unwittingly mingled an unwise fervor in his exhortations to the Indian girl, he bitterly regretted his fault. As day by day he saw her elastic figure grow more feeble, and marked her hollow cheeks and her sad eyes fixed reproachfully on him whilst he served the mass or taught the new converts, a tenderness for her, which her savage health and perfections had failed to arouse, awoke in his breast. When he saw the young braves, each with his dusky partner, and the sisters of the Smile of the Morning with their children in their arms, he sometimes cursed the priestly habit which proclaimed him a thing apart from all other of God’s creatures, doomed to live unmated and alone. Long vigils and heavy penances failed to ease the grief in his heart, or to set at rest its yearning toward the child who had been redeemed from barbarism, through his teaching, to live a Christian life and die in the hope of his faith.