The two surviving brothers and their sister undertook a journey to see, and if possible, to reclaim, the long lost Frances. Accompanied by an interpreter whom they had engaged in the Indian country, they reached at last the designated place and found their sister. But alas! how changed! Instead of the fair-haired and laughing girl, the picture yet living in their imagination, they found her an aged and thoroughbred squaw in everything but complexion. She was sitting when they entered her lodge, composed of two large log-houses connected by a shed, with her two daughters, the one about twenty-three years old, and the other about thirty-three, and three or four pretty grandchildren. The closing hours of the journey had been made in perfect silence, deep thoughts struggling in the bosoms of all. On entering the lodge, the first exclamation of one of the brothers was,--"Oh, God! is that my sister!" A moment afterward, and the sight of her thumb, disfigured in childhood, left no doubt as to her identity. The following colloquy, conducted through the interpreter, ensued: "What was your name when a child?" "I do not recollect." "What do you remember?" "My father, my mother, the long river, the staircase under which I hid when they came." "How came you to lose your thumb-nail?" "My brother hammered it off a long time ago, when I was a very little girl at my father's house." "Do you know how many brothers and sisters you had?" She then mentioned them, and in the order of their ages. "Would you know your name if you should hear it repeated?" "It is a long time since, and perhaps I should not." "Was it Frances?" At once a smile played upon her features, and for a moment there seemed to pass over the face what might be called the shadow of an emotion, as she answered, "_Yes_." Other reminiscences were awakened, and the recognition was complete. But how different were the emotions of the parties! The brothers paced the lodge in agitation. The civilized sister was in tears. The other, obedient to the affected stoicism of her adopted race, was as cold, unmoved, and passionless as marble. The brothers and sister returned unable, after urgent and loving entreaties, to win back their tawny sister from her wilds. Her Indian husband and children were there; there was the free, open forest, and she clung to these; and yet the love of her kinsfolk for her, and her's for them, was not quenched. [Illustration: PARTED FOREVER.]