"O Minnie! Minnie!" he cries, falling on his knees at her feet; "do not tell me that you are going to leave me!"
"I cannot help it, dear," she says, tenderly. "Before the spring dies I shall leave you. I shall spend my summer in another world." She repeats the words, as though they conveyed to her some deeper meaning than they implied. "Yes, I shall spend my summer in another world. My heart has been wintered in this."
He strives to reason her out of her belief,--tells her that it is fancy; but she gently checks him, with "Nay, dear Joshua. 'Tis but a little time to spring. Let us talk of other things."
Soon the buds begin to come, and the leaves grow green. Minnie hides her weakness, says that she feels stronger, and Joshua begins to hope. But he does not know what motive she has in this; he does not know that she puts on an appearance of strength, so that she may not retard their course southward. In many of their marches she sustains her fainting heart by strength, of love. "Nearer, nearer," she whispers to herself; "he shall owe all his happiness to me."
Come there to the camp one day some members of another tribe, who speak of having seen men of the color of Joshua and Minnie a couple of hundred miles to the south, mounted on strange animals. These aboriginal wanderers, indeed, are at variance with one another: some say that men and animals are one; others, that they are distinct creatures. Opara tells Joshua and Minnie, who are able by this time to understand the native tongue, and to make themselves understood.
"What Opara says is good," says Minnie. "We will go towards these men. They are our brothers. They will give me back my strength."
Opara being gone, Minnie asks Joshua what he thinks. Joshua, with eager voice and sparkling eyes, cries that they are stockmen on horses, as Rough-and-Ready had told them.
"All will yet be well," he says, his voice trembling with joyful emotion; "in a few months perhaps we shall be among white people again."
She listens in silence: and presently, in accordance with their nightly custom, he takes his accordion from its bag of fur, and plays the sweetest airs he knows. "Poor Tom Bowling" and "Bread-and-cheese and Kisses" are his principal themes; and as he plays, the newly-inspired hope stirs into life his dearest memories, and brings before him those pictures of his boyish days that he most loves to dwell upon.