"Your dear wife, I remember, never tired of telling of the years of peril you passed among the Indians in this far-off country. Surely, such wisdom and courage in a mere lad would have made a great name had you stayed in the army."
"It is very kind of you to say so, but I was only one of many who risked their lives similarly in the uprisings and ambuscades of the Indians."
"Yet you have always been friendly inclined toward them?"
"Yes, their cause has always appealed to me; nor was the danger ever sufficient to efface it from my heart."
"Their wars have been so cruel, though, Jefferson."
"They fight in the way they have been taught," he answered, gravely, "and for their homes, as white men do and will. Their love of country is not less than that of our race, and greater, maybe, for they live in its very bosom. Everything they treasure is threatened by the inroad of the whites, and has been from the beginning, the waves rolling on and over them like a cruel sea from which they cannot escape. They have sought to check or stay them, but only here and there have they been successful, and then only for a moment. Their fate is pathetic, and such, it seems to me, as to make men cry out. Brave and lost souls, they are like little children, made old and savage by the subtlety of the whites and our disregard of plighted faith."
"Why did you quit the service, Jefferson? Surely it was a great loss to our country," she went on, as was her way, without stopping to give him time to reply; "and how does it happen that you come back here? Some speculation, I suppose, for I hear the country is full of opportunities of that kind."
"No, madam; I am on my way to Dubuque to adjust the claim of a poor man who is kept out of his rights, partly by reason of my action while in the service," he answered, simply.
"Pray tell me about it," Mrs. Singleton asked.
"There is little to tell. When I was in the service the government sent me to Dubuque with troops to remove the miners who had established claims there in advance of an understanding with the Indians, and who, up to that time, had obstinately refused to move."