She pointed her hand up the river and replied, “Not far that way.”

“Have you been living here long?” asked Margaret.

“Not very long,” replied the young squaw.

“What is the matter with your husband?” said Margaret.

The little squaw answered, “My husband be very sick with consumption, most dead.”

“Where did you get that pretty ring on your finger?” said Mrs. Godfrey to the Indian woman.

Margaret Godfrey had noticed the ring on the squaw’s finger, sparkling in the sunlight, as she pointed her small brown hand up the river in the direction of her home.

The swarthy beauty, with an innocent smile, as she hung her head on one side, said, “My husband give it me after we get married.”  The Indian lass then began to run her fingers over a string of red and white beads, that encircled her round plump neck and hung loosely down over a well proportioned bosom.  At the same time she kept scraping the ground with the toe of her moccasin, and now and again crossing one foot over the other and resting the tip of her toe for an instant on the earth.  Then she would swing one of her feet about a foot from the ground over the other.  Her dark blue dress being quite short, and the wind blowing stiffly, she would occasionally display a small prettily formed foot, and an ankle that looked as though it had been formed in nature’s most perfect mould.

Mrs. Godfrey broke the silence by asking the young woman if she would like her to go to the wigwam and see her sick husband?  The Indian woman answered, “May be dead now, and long rough walk, no canoe here.”

Margaret said to her, “Suppose you come down here to-morrow morning in a canoe and take me up to your wigwam?” She answered, “Have no canoe, but might get Jim Newall’s, who lives mile more up river, he has canoe and sometime bring me down here.”

Margaret agreed to accompany her to her wigwam early the next morning, if Newall and she came to the settlement in a canoe.

She said she would go and see Newall, and if he could not come, she would walk down and let her (Margaret) know how her husband was.

Mrs. Godfrey told the squaw where she would find her at ten o’clock the next morning, and then taking the hand of the Indian woman into that of her own, looked carefully at the ring, as she bid her good day.

Margaret recognized the ring as the one she had lost during the assault of the rebels at Grimross, in 1776.  She missed it from off her finger soon after the cross-eyed, monkey-faced rebel “Will,” had pulled her about the floor by the hand, and never saw or heard of it after.  Paul Guidon often said to Mrs. Godfrey, that he believed the rebel “Will” had stolen her ring.

It was a very valuable one, set with a choice emerald, surrounded by precious stones.  It was presented to Margaret by her father, on the day he was elected Mayor of Cork, and cost forty-live guineas.  It had never occurred to Margaret, during her conversation with the squaw, to ask her name.