The passing of Onawata was all peace. An hour with the missionary, even though he was not of her faith, brought her something of the peace that passeth understanding. There was still her anxiety for the future of her children, which she had settled in her own way. There only remained the telling of it to them, and that she deferred till the very last.
They were together in the little hut after a day of quiet rest and freedom from pain.
“Here, Tanna,” she called in her soft Chippewayan tongue. “Come hither, little Singing Water, light of my eyes. Come in beside me.” She gathered the child in her arms and held her close. “Peter, come too.” The boy came and knelt by her bed, his dark face set as if cast in bronze. He well knew what was before them all. His mother’s arm went round his shoulders.
“Little ones, your mother is going away,” she began, her voice coming softly and evenly, like the flowing of quietly running water, “away to a good country—ah! a good country!—where the warm sun is always shining, no frost, no snow, no hunger, no pain, no sickness, no fear, no fighting, no blood. Oh, it is a good country.” She lay quiet a few moments, her dark face growing young and beautiful. The little girl’s fingers crept over her face.
“Oh, Mammy, you are smiling. When will we go? I do not love the cold and the hunger, and I want no more pain for you, Mammy dear.” The little one spoke in her father’s tongue. Her mother had seen to that. “And, Mammy, there will be no more dark. I know! I know!”
The mother drew the little one close to her with a low moaning cry and again she lay silent, drinking slowly to the dregs that last bitter cup that all mothers must drink. But having drunk, she set herself to her last service for them.
“Not today will you come, Singing Water,” she said, her voice flowing softly again. “I will go and later you will come, and Peter and Paul. And now you will listen and remember, you and Peter, while the sun shines and the winds blow you will not forget.”
“Yes, Mammy,” whispered the child.
“You and Peter will go back to my people.”
“No,” said Paul, speaking with sharp decision. “Where I go they will go.”