There was the faintest lightening of the gloom upon the Indian woman's face as Dark-Eye said this. But he was, apart from his terror of bloodshed and fighting, a courageous lad, and had, during their past days of wandering, proved the good stuff of which he was made. Many a day he had gone without eating that the remnant of their food might be saved for the Sun Maid; and though it was, of course, Wahneenah who had taken all the care of the children, if it pleased him to consider their cases reversed he should be left to his own opinion. "You're right, boy. I'll call you Gaspar, easy enough. Only, you see, I hain't got no sons of my own an' it kind of makes things seem cosier if I call other folkes's youngsters that way. Every little shaver this side of Illinois calls me 'Uncle Abe,' I reckon. But go on with your yarn. My, my, my! Won't Mercy be beat when she comes home an' hears all that's happened whilst she was gone. Go on." So Gaspar told all that had occurred since the Black Partridge parted from his sister in the cavern and rode away toward St. Joseph's. How that very day came one of the visiting Indians who had been staying at Muck-otey-pokee and whose behavior toward the neighboring white settlers had been a prominent cause of bringing the soldiers' raid upon the innocent and friendly hosts who had entertained him. The wicked like not solitude, and in the train of this traitor had followed many others. These had turned the cave into a pandemonium and had appropriated to their own uses the stores which Black Partridge had provided for Wahneenah. When to this robbery they had added threats against the lives of the white children, whose presence at the Indian village they in their turn declared had brought destruction upon it, the chief's sister had taken such small portion of her own property as she could secure and had set out to find a new home or shelter for her little ones. Since then they had been always wandering. Wahneenah now had a fixed dread of the pale-faces and had avoided their habitations as far as might be. They had lived in the woods, upon the roots and dried berries they could find and whose power to sustain life the squaw had understood. But now had come the cold of approaching winter and the Sun Maid had shown the effects of her long exposure. Then, at Gaspar's pleading, Wahneenah had put her own distrust of strangers aside and had come with him to the first cabin of white people which they could find. "And now we're here, what will you do with us?" concluded the lad, fixing his dark eyes earnestly upon his host's face. Abel fidgetted a little; then, with his happy faculty of putting off till to-morrow the evil that belonged to to-day, he replied: