"Come for advice, like me, may be."
"Perhaps they are come to school. The old chief told them that I would teach them."
"You?"
"They have no father now."
"No father?"
"No chief."
Mrs. Woods had been so overwhelmed with her own grief that she had given little thought to the death of Benjamin and the chief of the Cascades. The unhappy condition of the little tribe now came to her as in a picture; and, as she saw before her some fifty Indians seated on the ground, her good heart came back to her, and she said, touched by a sense of her own widowhood, "Gretchen, I pity 'em."
Mrs. Woods was right. These Indians had come to seek the advice of Mr. Mann in regard to their tribal affairs. Gretchen also was right. They had come to ask Mr. Mann to teach their nation.
It was an unexpected assembly that Marlowe Mann faced as he came down the clearing, but it revealed to him, at a glance, his future work in life.
The first of the distressed people to meet him was Mrs. Woods.