Neither had the Sun Maid paid them any attention, for she had always been accustomed to meeting the savages both at the Fort and on her rides abroad with any of her garrison friends; so she deliberately sipped her breakfast, pausing now and then to arrange the pouch-like petals of some favored blossoms and to converse with them in her fantastic fashion, quite believing that they heard and understood. "Did the nice Feather-man bring you all softly, little posies? Aren't you glad you've come to live with Kitty? Other Mother will give you all some breakfast, too, of coldest water in the brook. Then you will sit up straight and hold your heads high. That's the way the children do when my Captain takes the book with the green cover and makes them spell things out of it. Oscar doesn't like the green book. It makes him wriggle his nose--so; but Margaret is as fond of it as I am of you. Oh, dear! Some day, all my mothers say, I, too, will have to sit and look on the printing and spell words. I can, though, even now. Listen, posies. D-o-g--that's--that's--I guess it's 'cat.' Isn't it, posies? But you don't have to spell things, do you? I needn't either. Not to-day, and maybe not to-morrow day. Because, you see, I runned away. Oh, how I did run! So fast, so far, before I found your little sisters, posies, dear. Then I guess I went to sleep, without ever saying my 'Now I lay me,' and the black Feather-man came, and--that's all." Wahneenah had gone back to her household duties, for she had many things on hand that day. Not the least, to make her neglected tepee a brighter, fitter home for this stray sunbeam which the Great Spirit had sent to her out of the sky, and into which He had breathed the soul of her lost one. Indistinctly, she heard the murmuring of the babyish voice at the threshold and occasionally caught some of the words it uttered. These served but to establish her in her belief that the child had more than mortal senses; else how should she fancy that the blossoms would hear and understand her prattle? "Listen. She talks to the weeds as the white men talk to us. She is a witch," said the Man-Who-Kills to his neighbor in the circle, the White Pelican. "She is only a child of the pale-faces. The Black Partridge has set her among us to move our hearts to pity." "The White Pelican was ever a coward," snorted the Man-Who-Kills. But the younger warrior merely turned his head and smiled contemptuously. Then he critically scrutinized the ill-proportioned figure of the ugly-tempered brave. The fellow's crooked back, abnormally long arms and short legs were an anomaly in that race of stalwart Indians, and the soul of the savage corresponded to his outward development. For his very name had been given him in derision; because, though he always threatened and always sneaked after his prey, he had never been known to slay an enemy in open combat.