Mrs. Woods’s face clouded again.

“The Injun told husband that some of the warriors had formed a plot against me, and that, if they were to capture me, they would torture me.  Gretchen, I am afraid.  Don’t you pity me?”

“Mother, I know my power over the chief and Benjamin, and I know the power of a chief’s sense of honor.  I do pity you, you are so distressed.  But, mother, no evil will ever come to you where I am, nor the school where I am.  I am going to be a teacher among these Indians, if I live; I feel this calling, and my work will somehow begin here.”

“A teacher among the Injuns!  You?  You a teacher?  Are anvils going to fly?  Here I am, a poor lone woman, away out here three thousand miles from home, and tremblin’ all over, at every sound that I hear at night, for fear I shall be attacked by Injuns, and you are dreamin’, with your head all full of poetry, of goin’ away and leavin’ me, the best friend that you ever had on the earth, as good as a mother to you; of goin’ away—­of leavin’ me, to teach a lot of savages!  Gretchen, I knew that the world was full of empty heads, but I never realized how empty the human heart is until now!  Been a mother to you, too!”

“O mother, I never thought of leavin’ you unless you wished it.”

“What did you think was goin’ to become of me?  I never kissed any child but you, and sometimes, when you are real good, I feel just as though I was your mother.”

“I thought that you would help me.”

“Help you, what doin’?”

“To teach the Indians.”

“To teach the Injuns—­Indians you call ’em!  I’d like to teach one Injun to bring back my saw!  I never tried to teach but one Injun—­and he was him.  You can’t make an eagle run around a door-yard like a goose, and you can’t teach an Injun to saw wood—­the first thing you know, the saw will be missin’.—­But how I am runnin’ on!  I do have a good deal of prejudice against the savages; nevertheless—­”

“I knew, mother, that you would say ‘nevertheless.’  It seems to me that word is your good spirit.  I wish you would tell me what thought came to your mind when you said that word.”

“‘Nevertheless?’”

“Yes.”

“Well, the Master—­”

“He said—­”

“Yes—­preach the gospel to every creature!  I suppose that meant Injuns and all.”

“Yes—­he said ’teach’—­so the schoolmaster explained it.”

“Did he?  Well, I ought to obey it in spirit—­hadn’t I?—­or at least not hinder others.  I might help you teach it if I could get into the right spirit.  But what put that thought into your head?”

“Mrs. Spaulding, the missionary, has been to visit the school.  She sang so beautifully!  These were the words: 

    “’In the desert let me labor,
      On the mountain let me tell.’

“When she sung that, it all came to me—­what I was—­what I was sent into the world to do—­what was the cause of your loving me and bringing me out here—­I saw a plan in it all.  Then, too, it came to me that you would at first not see the calling as I do, but that you would say nevertheless, and help me, and that we would work together, and do some good in the world, you and I. Oh!  I saw it all.”