“Don’t mention about gratitude,” rejoined the kind hearted Mrs. Younker; “don’t talk about gratitude, for a lettle favor sech as every body’s got a right to, what comes into this country and gits shot by savages.  We havn’t done no more for you than we’d a done for any body else in like sarcumstances; and, la, sir, the pleasure o’ knowing you’re a going to git well agin, arter being shot by Injen’s pizen bullets,[3] is enough to pay us twenty times over—­Eh!  Ella, child—­don’t you say so?”

“No one, save the gentleman himself, or his dearest friends, can be more rejoiced at his favorable symptoms than myself,” responded Ella, timidly, in a voice so low, sweet and touching, that Reynolds, who heard without seeing her—­for she kept the rude curtain of skins between them—­felt his heart beat strangely, while his eyes involuntarily grew moist.

“That’s truly said, gal—­truly said, I do believe,” rejoined Mrs. Younker; “for she’s hung over you, sir, (turning to the wounded man) night and day, like a mother over her child, until we’ve had to use right smart authority to make her go to bed, for fear as how she’d be sick too.”

“And if I live,” answered Reynolds, in a voice that trembled with emotion, “and it is ever in my power to repay such disinterested attention and kindness, I will do it, even to the sacrificing that life which she, together with you and your family, good woman, has been the means, under God, of preserving.”

“Under God,” repeated the matron; “that’s true; I like the way you said that, stranger; it sounds reverential—­it’s just—­and it raises my respect for you a good deal; for all our doings is under God’s permit;” and she turned her eyes upward, with a devout look, in which position she remained several seconds; while Ella, with her fair hands clasped, followed her example, and seemed, with her moving lips, engaged in prayer.

“But come,” resumed the dame, “it won’t do for you, stranger, to be disturbed too much jest now; for you arn’t any too strong, I reckon; and so you’ll jest take my advice, and go to sleep awhile, and you’ll feel all the better for’t agin Ben and Isaac come home, which’ll be in two or three hours.”

Saying this, Mrs. Younker again disposed the curtains so as to conceal from Reynolds all external objects; and, together with Ella, withdrew, leaving him to repose.  Whether he profited by her advice immediately, or whether he meditated for some time on other matters, not excluding Ella, we shall leave to the imagination of the reader; while we proceed, by way of episode, to give a general, though brief account, of the Younker family.