and girls to the East. My mother did not seem to want me to talk about
them. But in a day or two, I gleaned many wonderful stories from my
playfellows concerning the strangers.

"Mother, my friend Judéwin is going home with the missionaries. She is
going to a more beautiful country than ours; the palefaces told her
so!" I said wistfully, wishing in my heart that I too might go.

Mother sat in a chair, and I was hanging on her knee. Within the last
two seasons my big brother Dawée had returned from a three years'
education in the East, and his coming back influenced my mother to take
a farther step from her native way of living. First it was a change from
the buffalo skin to the white man's canvas that covered our wigwam. Now
she had given up her wigwam of slender poles, to live, a foreigner, in a
home of clumsy logs.

"Yes, my child, several others besides Judéwin are going away with the
palefaces. Your brother said the missionaries had inquired about his
little sister," she said, watching my face very closely.

My heart thumped so hard against my breast, I wondered if she could hear
it.

"Did he tell them to take me, mother?" I asked, fearing lest Dawée had
forbidden the palefaces to see me, and that my hope of going to the
Wonderland would be entirely blighted.

With a sad, slow smile, she answered: "There! I knew you were wishing to
go, because Judéwin has filled your ears with the white man's lies.
Don't believe a word they say! Their words are sweet, but, my child,