Then, more composed, and trusting in the blessed Father of us all, they fell asleep, and sweet were their slumbers, though far from their dear parents and home, for angels watched over them, and gave to them happy dreams.

A few days’ residence among these untutored red men made Emma and Anna great favorites among them; their pleasant dispositions, their good nature, and, above all, their love for the little Winona, which was fully reciprocated, endeared them to the father and mother of the Indian girl.  Though sad at being separated from their parents, and though they often wept until they could weep no longer when they thought of home, yet their hearts, like those of all children, were easily consoled, and their spirits were so elastic that they could not long be depressed.  Winona loved them tenderly; at night she slept between them, and during the day she would never leave them.  She wore garlands of their wreathing, listened to their English songs, stroked their rosy cheeks, and frolicked with them in the woods, and beside the running brooks.

Two months passed away; all the Indian women in the village were speaking of the love that had sprung up between the little white girls and the copper-colored Winona; and many a hard hand smoothed the golden curls of the little captives in token of affection.  Then Winona was taken sick; her body glowed with the fever-heat, her bright eyes became dull, and day and night she moaned with pain.  With surprising care and tenderness, Emma and Anna nursed the suffering child,—­for to them were her glowing and burning hands extended for relief, rather than to her mother.  They held her throbbing head, lulled her to sleep, bathed her hot temples, moistened her parched lips, and soothed her distresses; but they could not win her from the power of death—­and she died!

Oh, it was a sorrowful thing to them to part with their little playmate,—­to see the damp earth heaped upon her lovely form, and to feel that she was forever hidden from their sight!  They wept, and, with the almost frantic mother, laid their faces on the tiny grave, and moistened it with their tears.  Hither they often came to scatter the freshest flowers, and to weep for the home they feared they would never again see; and here they often kneeled in united prayer to that God, who bends on prayerful children a loving eye, and spreads over them a shadowing wing.

The childless Indian woman now loved them more than ever; but the death of Winona had opened afresh the fountains of their grief, and often did she find them weeping so bitterly that she could not comfort them.  She would draw them to her bosom, and tenderly caress them; but it all availed not, and when the month of October came, with its sere foliage and fading flowers, Emma and Anna had grown so thin, and pale, and feeble, from their wearing home-sickness, that they stayed all day in the wigwam, going out only to visit Winona’s grave.  They drooped and drooped, and those who saw them said, “The white children will die, and lie down with Winona.”