The worker, arraigned by his conscience and condemned by his fellows as a failure, sees but one side of life, while on the other spirits invisible may be praising his service as one of immortal beauty. The wise women, Catherine and Thunder Feather, saw the excellence of Storm's deeds, but also the error in his thoughts which brought his work to naught. He supposed his honor to demand a duel with No-man, while Rain's desire was wholly set on murder, and the trapper lived but for the single motive of a fair fight to the death with his only friend. Such thoughts were not curative to the sick or helpful to the nurse, but liable to end in some unpleasantness. Catherine and Thunder Feather prayed for help to Hiawatha.
He came, not to Rain's tipi, but to her place of sacrifice, that hill which like an altar stood in the middle of the Apse of Ice. He called the children to him, and when they arrived borne, in their dream, through the hush of the night, they found him. Remote and spectral under the moonlight, the walls went up to spires of frosty silver, and at their feet five glaciers crouched, half seen through a veil of mist.
"May the Light defend us," said Hiawatha, "from spiritual perils and in earthly danger."
Rain sat on his right hand, Storm on his left, their hearts at rest.
"I come to tell you about certain angels."
The story-teller's duty is to amuse and interest the folk, setting forth real and golden truth, not of events as though he were historian, not of philosophy as though he were a scholar, not of religion as though he were a priest, but of human character, adventure, humor, tragedy, and fun. He is the jester in a fool's cap, motley, and bells, but it would be a poor joke to trap the unwary reader with a sermon. That would be dishonest and the book a swindle.
Yet I did love Hiawatha's sermons, sitting with Rain and Storm to listen, moved as they were moved, crying a little at times or laughing with them, resolved as they were resolved to be more kindly, not quite such a prig, forgiving as they forgave a fallen enemy, and living as they lived on this earth the life immortal.
We are so busy gabbling and fussing that our guardian angels cannot get a word in edgeways unless we are asleep. And then we don't remember. The soul remembers. I deem the world would all go mad but for the good things which happen in the night, while the bodies of the dream-folk rest.
So Hiawatha's sermons shall make a separate volume, a better one than this, and for the time it is enough to specify that through this teaching Rain and Storm forgave No-man his trespass, hoping to be for-given some of their own pet sins.
Long after his children had gone back to their lodge, the Guardian Spirit of the New Race sat by the altar fire peering into the future, the great and terrible days to come. He saw his people play the Game of Life not for the zest of it, but for greed of the counters. In that game, as seen from the spirit planes, the winner is he who gives away the counters, the piteous loser he who stakes his soul to get them, but presently leaving the table, finds his gains no longer a currency in regions where a million of them will not buy so much as a drop of water.