I leave them nodding in the breeze, but take along with me their impress upon my heart.  I pause to rest me upon a rock embedded on the side of a foothill facing the low river bottom.  Here the Stone-Boy, of whom the American aborigine tells, frolics about, shooting his baby arrows and shouting aloud with glee at the tiny shafts of lightning that flash from the flying arrow-beaks.  What an ideal warrior he became, baffling the siege of the pests of all the land till he triumphed over their united attack.  And here he lay—­Inyan our great-great-grandfather, older than the hill he rested on, older than the race of men who love to tell of his wonderful career.

Interwoven with the thread of this Indian legend of the rock, I fain would trace a subtle knowledge of the native folk which enabled them to recognize a kinship to any and all parts of this vast universe.  By the leading of an ancient trail I move toward the Indian village.

With the strong, happy sense that both great and small are so surely enfolded in His magnitude that, without a miss, each has his allotted individual ground of opportunities, I am buoyant with good nature.

Yellow Breast, swaying upon the slender stem of a wild sunflower, warbles a sweet assurance of this as I pass near by.  Breaking off the clear crystal song, he turns his wee head from side to side eyeing me wisely as slowly I plod with moccasined feet.  Then again he yields himself to his song of joy.  Flit, flit hither and yon, he fills the summer sky with his swift, sweet melody.  And truly does it seem his vigorous freedom lies more in his little spirit than in his wing.

With these thoughts I reach the log cabin whither I am strongly drawn by the tie of a child to an aged mother.  Out bounds my four-footed friend to meet me, frisking about my path with unmistakable delight.  Chaen is a black shaggy dog, “a thoroughbred little mongrel” of whom I am very fond.  Chaen seems to understand many words in Sioux, and will go to her mat even when I whisper the word, though generally I think she is guided by the tone of the voice.  Often she tries to imitate the sliding inflection and long-drawn-out voice to the amusement of our guests, but her articulation is quite beyond my ear.  In both my hands I hold her shaggy head and gaze into her large brown eyes.  At once the dilated pupils contract into tiny black dots, as if the roguish spirit within would evade my questioning.

Finally resuming the chair at my desk I feel in keen sympathy with my fellow-creatures, for I seem to see clearly again that all are akin.  The racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings.  And even here men of the same color are like the ivory keys of one instrument where each resembles all the rest, yet varies from them in pitch and quality of voice.  And those creatures who are for a time mere echoes of another’s note are not unlike the fable of the thin sick man whose distorted shadow, dressed like a real creature, came to the old master to make him follow as a shadow.  Thus with a compassion for all echoes in human guise, I greet the solemn-faced “native preacher” whom I find awaiting me.  I listen with respect for God’s creature, though he mouth most strangely the jangling phrases of a bigoted creed.