Chapter 3

A STURDY COLONIST

For the contrast betwixt that dreadful scene and the one on which my dim eyes slowly opened, three days afterward, first I thank the Lord in heaven, whose gracious care was over me, and after Him some very simple members of humanity.

A bronze-colored woman, with soft, sad eyes, was looking at me steadfastly. She had seen that, under tender care, I was just beginning to revive, and being acquainted with many troubles, she had learned to succor all of them. This I knew not then, but felt that kindness was around me.

"Arauna, arauna, my shild," she said, in a strange but sweet and soothing voice, "you are with the good man in the safe, good house. Let old Suan give you the good food, my shild."

"Where is my father? Oh, show me my father?" I whispered faintly, as she raised me in the bed and held a large spoon to my lips.

"You shall--you shall; it is too very much Inglese; me tell you when have long Sunday time to think. My shild, take the good food from poor old Suan."

She looked at me with such beseeching eyes that, even if food had been loathsome to me, I could not have resisted her; whereas I was now in the quick-reviving agony of starvation. The Indian woman fed me with far greater care than I was worth, and hushed me, with some soothing process, into another abyss of sleep.

More than a week passed by me thus, in the struggle between life and death, before I was able to get clear knowledge of any body or any thing. No one, in my wakeful hours, came into my little bedroom except this careful Indian nurse, who hushed me off to sleep whenever I wanted to ask questions. Suan Isco, as she was called, possessed a more than mesmeric power of soothing a weary frame to rest; and this was seconded, where I lay, by the soft, incessant cadence and abundant roar of water. Thus every day I recovered strength and natural impatience.

"The master is coming to see you, shild," Suan said to me one day, when I had sat up and done my hair, and longed to be down by the water-fall; "if, if--too much Inglese--old Suan say no more can now."

"If I am ready and able and willing! Oh, Suan, run and tell him not to lose one moment."

"No sure; Suan no sure at all," she answered, looking at me calmly, as if there were centuries yet to spare. "Suan no hurry; shild no hurry; master no hurry: come last of all."

"I tell you, Suan, I want to see him. And I am not accustomed to be kept waiting. My dear father insisted always--But oh, Suan, Suan, he is dead--I am almost sure of it."

"Him old man quite dead enough, and big hole dug in the land for him. Very good; more good than could be. Suan no more Inglese."

Well as I had known it long, a catching of the breath and hollow, helpless pain came through me, to meet in