The mother glanced up, and despite the tear stains about her eyes, dimpled and laughed in response.  Griefs may come and pleasures go, nations rise and fall, the world wag on as it will, but this old joy of mother and child, each in the other, is ever new and yet ever the same.

Resuming her occupation, the woman hesitated for a moment as she was about to lay the meat on the coals, the half of a wood duck, fortunately killed by an arrow, for larger game was not attainable, the wild beasts of the country being in flight as never heretofore.  The conflagration of the towns of a whole district, the turmoils of the heady victorious troops, hitherto held together, but now sent through the region in separate detachments, each within reach of support, however, had stripped the tribe of this last means of subsistence.  Years and years afterward the grim dismantled fragments of these buildings were still to be seen, the charred walls and rafters mere skeletons against the sky, standing, melancholy memorials of war, on the hillsides and in the valleys, along the watercourses “transparent as glass,” of that lovely country where these pleasant homes had been.

The Indian woman doubted if the bit of fat could be spared; then poising it in her hand under the watchful eyes of all, she flung it into the fire, the essential burnt-offering according to their old religious custom.

Digatiski, bowing his head still lower, once more groaned aloud.  He would not have stayed her hand,—­but to hunger even for the offering to the fire!  The woman whose head was muffled had only to repeat her sobs anew; she could not sorrow more!  But the pappoose in its primitive cradle on the wall babbled out its simple pleasure, and now and again the tearful little mother must needs lift smiling eyes.

The great ada-wehi looked out at the night.  On the whole he was glad he was dead!

He took no bite, nor did Digatiski.  The Indian men were accustomed to long fasts in war and in hunting, and they left the trivial bits to the women.  The muffled figure of grief held out her hand blindly and munched the share given her in the folds of her veil.  Then, for tears are of no nutritive value, she held out her hand again.  Feeling it still empty, she lifted the veil from a swollen tear-stained face to gaze aghast at the others.  They silently returned the gaze, aghast themselves, and then all three women fell to sobbing once more.  But the pappoose was crowing convivially over a bone.

Hunger does not dispose to slumber, nor does war with the sight of a dozen towns aflame.  They slept, but in fitful starts, and the first gray siftings of light through the desolate darkness found them all gazing drearily at it, for what might a new day signify to them but new dangers, fresh sorrows, and quickened fears.

A flush was presently in the east, albeit dusk lingered westward.  The wonderful crystalline white lustre of the morning star palpitated in the amber sky, seeming the very essence of light, then gradually vanished in a roseate haze.  The black mountains grew purple, changing to a dark rich green.  The deep, cool valleys were dewy in the midst of a shadowy gray vapor.  The farthest ranges showed blue under a silver film, and suddenly here were the rays of the sun shooting over all the world, aiming high and far for the western hills.