The soft obstruction was a little child, curled into a rounded heap, and fast asleep upon this primitive public highway. The touch of the red man's foot had partially wakened the sleeper, and when he bent and laid his hand upon her shoulder, she sprang up lightly, at once beginning to laugh and chatter with a gayety that infected even the stolid Indian. "Ugh! The Little-One-Who-Laughs. Why are you here alone, so far from the Fort, Kitty Briscoe?" "I runned away. Bunny rabbit runned away. I did catch him two times. I did find some posies, all yellow and round and--posies runned away, too. Ain't that funny? Kitty go seek them." Her laughter trilled out, bird clear, and a mischievous twinkle lighted her big blue eyes. "I runned away. Bunny rabbit runned to catch me. I runned to catch bunny. I caught the posies. Yellow posies gone--I go find them, too." As if it were the best joke in the world, the little creature still laughed over her own conceit of so many runnings till, in whirling about, she discovered the remnants of the flowers she had lost upon the heat-hardened path behind her. Indeed, when she had dropped down to sleep, overcome by sudden weariness, it had been with the cool leaves and blossoms for a couch. Now the love of all green and growing things was an inborn passion with this child, and her face sobered to a keen distress as she gazed upon her ruined treasures. But almost at once the cloud passed, and she laughed again. "Poor posies, tired posies, sleepy, too. Kitty sorry. Put them in the water trough and wake them up. Then they hold their eyes open, just like Kitty's." "Ugh! Where the papoose sleeps the blossoms wither," remarked Black Partridge, regarding the bruised and faded plants with more attention. They were wild orchids, and he knew that the child must have wandered far afield to obtain them. At that time of year such blooms were extremely rare, and only to be found in the moist shadows of some tree-bordered stream quite remote from this sandy beach. "Oh, dear! Something aches my feet. I will go home to my little bed. Pick up the posies, Feather-man, and take poor Kitty." With entire confidence that the Indian would do as she wished, the small maid clasped his buckskin-covered knee and leaned her dimpled cheek against it. It proved a comfortable support, and with a babyish yawn she promptly fell asleep again. Had she been a child of his own village, even of his own wigwam, Black Partridge would have shaken her roughly aside, feeling his dignity affronted by her familiarity; but in her case he could not do this and on this night least of all. The little estray was the orphan of Fort Dearborn; whose soldier father had met a soldier's common fate, and whose mother had quickly followed him with her broken heart. Then the babe of a few weeks became the charge of the kind women at the Fort, and the pet of the garrison in general.