The sun had set, and the long, long twilight of the north was gathering.  Five Feathers built up the fire, for the prairie night brings a chill, even in June.

“Did you see them again, the red flowers, while you slept?” he asked the boy.

“Yes; fields of them,” replied Jerry.  Then added, “Why?”

“It is good,” said the Indian.  “Very good.  You will now have what we call ‘The Scarlet Eye.’”

“What’s that?” asked Jerry, half frightened.

“It’s very good.  You will yourself be a great medicine man—­what you white men call ‘doctor.’  You like to be that?”

“I never thought of studying medicine until to-day,” said the boy, excitedly; “but, just as Billy rode away, something seemed to grip me.  I made up my mind then and there to be a doctor.”

“That is because you have seen ‘The Scarlet Eye,’” said the Indian, quietly.

“Tell me of it, will you, Five Feathers?” asked the boy, gently.

“Yes, but first I lift you on to bed.”  And, gathering Jerry in his strong, lean arms, he laid him on the grass couch in the green tepee, looked at his foot, loosened all his clothing, spread the one blanket over him, stirred up the fire, and, sitting at the tepee door, began the story.

THE SCARLET EYE

“Only the great, the good, the kindly people ever see it.  One must live well, must be manly and brave, and talk straight without lies, without meanness, or ‘The Scarlet Eye’ will never come to them.  They tell me that, over the great salt water, in your white man’s big camping-ground named London, in far-off England, the medicine man hangs before his tepee door a scarlet lamp, so that all who are sick may see it, even in the darkness.* It is the sign that a good man lives within that tepee, a man whose life is given to help and heal sick bodies.  We redskins of the North-West have heard this story, so we, too, want a sign of a scarlet lamp, to show where lives a great, good man.  The blood of the red flower shows us this.  If you drink it and see no red flowers, you are selfish, unkind; your talk is not true; your life is not clear; but, if you see the flowers, as you did to-day, you are good, kind, noble.  You will be a great and humane medicine man.  You have seen the Scarlet Eye.  It is the sign of kindness to your fellowmen.”

[Some of the Indian tribes of the Canadian North-West are familiar with the fact that in London, England, the sign of a physician’s office is a scarlet lamp suspended outside the street door.]

The voice of Five Feathers ceased, but his fingers were clasping the small hand of the white boy, clasping it very gently.

“Thank you, Five Feathers,” Jerry said, softly.  “Yes, I shall study medicine.  Father always said it was the noblest of all the professions, and I know to-night that it is.”

A moment later, Jerry lay sleeping like a very little child.  For a while the Indian watched him silently.  Then, arising, he took off his buckskin shirt, folded it neatly, and, lifting the sleeping boy’s head, arranged it as a pillow.  Then, naked to the waist, he laid himself down outside near the fire—­and he, too, slept.