"Good," he replied; "White Buffalo is a very wise sachem. What is there he does not know?"
"Nothing! Did he not predict that Glass-eye would place himself at the head of the Redskin warriors, and deliver them from the Palefaces of the East?"
"It is true," the hunter said, though he did not know a word of what the girl was revealing to him; but he now began to suspect a vast plot formed by the Indians, and he naturally desired to know more. Prairie-Flower looked at him with an expression of simple joy.
"My brother sees that I know all," she said.
"That is true," he answered; "my sister is better informed than I supposed; now she can explain to me, without fear, the service she desires from Glass-eye."
The girl took a long glance at the young man, who was still sleeping.
"Prairie-Flower is suffering," she said, in a low and trembling voice; "a cloud has passed over her mind and obscured it."
"Prairie-Flower is sixteen," the old hunter answered, with a smile; "a new feeling is awakened in her; a little bird is singing in her heart; she listens unconsciously to the harmonious notes of those strains which she does not yet understand."
"It is true," the maiden murmured, suddenly growing pensive; "my heart is sad. Is, then, love a suffering?"
"Child," the hunter answered, with a melancholy accent, "creatures are thus made by the Master of Life. All sensation is suffering. Joy, carried to an excess, becomes pain; you love without knowing it; loving is suffering."