Longhair and His Present. Page 186.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE WAR-SONG.
Mrs. Payson sat sewing in her pleasant room at the hotel. Her thoughts were far away from the checkered experiences of the frontier, for her husband–having received by the last mail a new book from an eastern friend–read while she plied her needle. Baby was in his crib in the bed-room adjoining, and Fannie and Helen were whispering in a matronly way in the corner, as with the help of mother’s scissors they fitted their dolls to new dresses. Had you looked in upon the group, you would not realize that they constituted a pioneer missionary’s family; for the hotel building was tasteful and spacious, and if they lived and dressed plainly, and often felt the pinchings of poverty, their appearance betrayed no unhappiness. And then the volume had transported the father and mother to other and brighter scenes than those of the uncultured wilderness. The tone of the reader in its subdued or impassioned modulations attested the interest he felt in the volume, and the heightened color of 188 the wife showed her sympathy with the theme. What a magician is a book! It can cause the poor to forget their poverty, and the wanderer in a distant land to become oblivious of his exile.
“What was that?” exclaimed the missionary and his wife at once, as they sprang to their feet in breathless suspense.
Again the horrible cry broke forth, seeming to come from the room below.