"Your prison?" "Is it not my prison?" "It is no more your prison than you are a prisoner. You have long been free." There was a mournful sadness in Alice Rody's speech which touched the heart of the Indian chief. "Freedom is a boon only to those who can enjoy it," she said, after a pause. "And are you unhappy?" asked Wacora. "Can you ask that question?--you who have done so much--" She paused; her generous nature hesitated to inflict pain. He concluded her speech for her. "I have done so much to make you unhappy. You are right. I have been an instrument in the hands of Fate, and you owe your misery to me. But I am only an instrument, not the original cause. My will had no voice in my actions, and but one motive prompted me. That was Duty." "Duty?" she asked, a smile curling her lip. "Yes, duty! I could prove it to you had you the desire to hear me." She resumed her seat, and said, quietly-- "I will hear you." "There was an Indian chief, the son of a Spanish woman. His father was a Seminole. Both are dead. He was reared amongst his father's people, and learned from them all that Indian youths are taught. Schools then existed amongst the Seminoles. The white missionaries had established them, and were still at their heads. They had both the ability and the desire to teach. From them Wacora learned all that the pale-faced children are taught. His mind was of his mother's race; his heart inclined to that of his father." "But why this difference?" she asked. "Because the more he knew the more was he convinced of the cruel oppression that had been suffered in all ages. History was a tissue of it. Geography marked its progress. Education only proved that civilisation was spread at the expense of honour and of right. This is what the schools taught him." "That is but one side of the question." "You are right, so he resolved to make himself familiar with the other. The story of the past might be applicable to the events of the present. Believing this, he left the schools, and sought the savannah and the forest. What did he find there? Nothing but the repetition of the past he had read of in books, aggravated by the lawlessness and rapacity of the present. The red man was ignorant. But did the pale-faces seek to educate him? No! They sought and still seek to keep him ignorant, because, in his ignorance, lies their advantage." "Was that all the fault of our race?" Alice asked, as she noticed the enthusiastic flush upon the speaker's face. "Not all. That were to argue falsely. The red man's vices grew greater as the chances of correcting them were denied him. His instinct prompted him to retaliation, for by this he sought to check oppression. 'Twas a vain effort. He found it so; and was forced to practise cruelty. So the quarrel progressed till to-day the Indian warrior sees in every white man only an enemy." "But now? Surely you are not so?"