It had since been the scene of her want
and misery.
The small portion of food they had taken for their journey was
exhausted. Rejoiced would they have been to have had the bark of trees
for food; but they were on the open prairie. There was nothing to
satisfy the wretched cravings of hunger, and her child--the very child
that clung to her bosom--was killed by the unhappy mother, and its
tender limbs supplied to her the means of life.
She reached the place of destination, but it was through instinct, for
forgetting and forgotten by all was the wretched maniac who entered her
native village.
The Indians feared her; they longed to kill her, but were afraid to do
so. They said she had no heart.
Sometimes she would go in the morning to the shore, and there, with only
her head out of water, would she lie all day.
Now, she has been weeping over the infant who sleeps by her. She is
perfectly harmless, and the wife of the war chief kindly gives her food
and shelter whenever she wishes it.
But it is not often she eats--only when desperate from long fasting--and
when her appetite is satisfied, she seems to live over the scene, the
memory of which has made her what she is.
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