arose. At midday the doctor addressed the attentive throng. Again at evening, with the moon shining in full splendor, the dark, eager faces gathered around the great fire in the open air. With a shawl around her shoulders and a handkerchief on her head, Mrs. Whitman sat in the door of her tent facing the fire in the foreground, with little Alice asleep in her arms. The air was clear and cold, but the cheeks of Alice were never so rosy. Now the doctor related the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, anon it was the tale of the Crucifixion. Sobs and cries burst from the Indians, women buried their faces in their hair. Almost as weird a scene as on that night in Calvary, was enacted on the banks of the lonely Tucannon.
Sometimes the missionary dwelt on their own sinful lives, their hearts, "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." Then their faces grew stern and they drew back.
"Don't, don't, don't tell us that. That talk is bad, bad, bad. Now give us some good talk. Tell us about the Bible country."
In summer the squaws had filled hundreds of rushbags with dried roots, and berries, and salmon pemmican, that they had worked hard to pulverize on the rocks in the sun. They buried them at night in caches, and went to the hills with the hunters to chase the deer. While they were gone other tribes came down and robbed their salmon caches those cellars where their winter stores lay hid and great suffering resulted.
"Ah, my poor people," said the sympathetic doctor, " I see some of your discomforts. Some of these days I shall have you all off the ground, out of the smoke, living in nice comfortable houses of wood. And you
