This was followed by a smile expressive of deep inward joy.  He stooped down and whispered,—­

“What is it, dear?”

She looked up, with eyes full of interior light, and said,—­

“Our Willie!”

She spoke in tones stronger than they had heard from her for several days; and after a slight pause, she added,—­

“Don’t you see him?  Wik-a-nee is with him, and he is weaving a string of the Guinea-peas in her hair.  He wears an Indian blanket; but they look happy, there where yellow leaves are falling and the bright waters are sparkling.”

“It is a flood of memory,” said Mr. Wharton, in a low tone.  “She recalls the time when Wik-a-nee was so pleased with the Guinea-peas that Willie gave her.”

“She has wakened from a pleasant dream,” said Uncle George, with the same subdued voice.  “It still remains with her, and the pictures seem real.”

The remarks were not intended for her ear, but she heard them, and murmured,—­

“No,—­not a dream.  Don’t you see them?”

They were the last words she ever uttered.  She soon dozed away into apparent oblivion; but twice afterward, that preternatural smile illumined her whole countenance.

At that same hour, hundreds of miles away, on the side of a wooded hill, mirrored in bright waters below, sat a white lad with a brown lassie beside him, among whose black shining tresses he was weaving strings of scarlet seeds.  He was clothed with an Indian blanket, and she with a skirt of woven grass.  Above them, from a tree glorious with sunshine, fell a golden shower of autumn leaves.  They were talking together in some Indian dialect.

“A-lee-lah,” said he, “your mother always told me that I gave you these red seeds when I was a little boy.  I wonder where I was then.  I wish I knew.  I never understood half she told me about the long trail.  I don’t believe I could ever find my way.”

“Don’t go!” said his companion, pleadingly.  “The sun will shine no more on A-lee-lah’s path.”

He smiled and was silent for a few minutes, while he twined some of the scarlet seeds on grasses round her wrist.  He revealed the tenor of his musings by saying,—­

“A-lee-lah, I wish I could see my mother.  Your mother told me she had blue eyes and pale hair.  I don’t remember ever seeing a woman with blue eyes and pale hair.”

Suddenly he started.

“What is it?” inquired the young girl, springing to her feet.

“My mother!” he exclaimed.  “Don’t you see her?  She is smiling at me.  How beautiful her blue eyes are!  Ah, now she is gone!” His whole frame quivered with emotion, as he cried out, in an agony of earnestness, “I want to go to my mother!  I must go to my mother!  Who can tell me where to find my mother?”

“You have looked into the Spirit-Land,” replied the Indian maiden, solemnly.