CHAPTER XX. ENEMIES, SEEN AND UNSEEN. But the time passed on and the rumors died away, or ended in nothing more serious than had always disturbed the dwellers in that lonely land. Now and again a friendly, peace-loving chief would ride up to the door of the Sun Maid's home, and, after a brief consultation she would put on her Indian attire and ride back with him across the prairies. As of old, she went with a heart full of love for her Indian friends, but it was not the undivided love that she had once been able to give them. Over her beautiful features had settled the brooding look which wifehood and motherhood gives; and though she listened as attentively as of old and counselled as wisely, she could not for one moment forget the little children waiting for her by her own hearthside or the brave husband who was so often away on his long journeys to the north; and the keen intelligence of the red men perceived this. "She is ours no longer," said a venerable warrior, after one such visit. "She has taken to herself a pale-face, he who met her on the prairie in the morning light, and her heart has gone from her. It is the way of life. The old passes, the new comes to reign. We are her past. Her Dark-Eye is her present. Her papooses are her future. The parting draws near. She is still the Sun Maid, the White Spirit, the Unafraid. As far as the Great Spirit wills, she will be faithful to us; but now when she rides homeward from a visit to our lodge it is no longer at the easy pace of one whose life is all her own, but wildly, swiftly, following her heart which has leaped before." Each morning, nearly, as the Sun Maid ministered to her little ones or busied herself among the domestic duties of her simple home she would joyfully exclaim to Wahneenah: "I don't believe there was ever a woman in the world so happy as I am!" And the Indian foster-mother would gravely reply: "Ask the Great Spirit that the peace may long continue." Till, on one especial day, the younger woman demanded: "Well, why should it not, my Mother? It is now many weeks since I have been called to settle any little quarrel among our people. Surely they are learning wisdom fast. Do you know something? I intend that some of the squaws who are idle shall make my baby, Gaspar the Second, a little costume of our own tribe. It shall be all complete; as if he were a tiny chief himself, with his leggings and head-dress, and--yes, even a little bow and quiver. I'll have it finished, maybe, before his father comes down from this last trip into the far-away woods. Oh! I shall be glad when my 'brave' can trust all his business of mining and fur-buying and lumbering to somebody else. I miss him so. But won't he be pleased with our little lad in feathers and buckskin?" Wahneenah's dark eyes looked keenly at her daughter's face.