"Through the pines rushed Wabausee, and down the river-bank
Waubeeneemah, and into the tide, until they met the coming canoe, across
whose birchen bow they gave the grasp of peace, and ever since that time
Indian and white man have called this place Skylight."

"Where are the Indians now?" I could not help asking,--and yet with no
purpose, beyond expression of the thought question.

The shadows were gathering, the eyelids of the day were closing. Saul
caught me up again through the shadows into those eyes of his, and
answered,--

"Here, Lucy! I am a pale form of Waubeeneemah! I know it! I feel it now!
I sometimes ache for foemen and the wilds."

Why do I think of that time to-night on the Big Blue, far away from
Skylight, and imagine that the prairie airs are ringing with the echoes
of the great cries that are heard in my native land, "I see North!" and
"I see South!" and there is no white man of them all high enough to see
the United States?

I've wandered! Let me think,--yes, I have it! My thought began with
trying to fancy Saul's mother taking him to baptism.

She was dead, when I went to Skylight, her son's wife.

She went into the higher life at thirty-three of the threescore-and-ten
cycle of the human period. How young to die!

The longer we live, the stronger grows the wish to live. And why