Small-pox had not been the only evil from which Victoria had suffered during the year which was about to close; the Sircies had made many raids upon it during the summer, stealing-down the sheltering banks of a small creek which entered the Saskatchewan at the opposite side, and then swimming the broad river during the night and lying hidden at day in the high corn-fields of the mission.  Incredible though it may appear, they continued this practice at a time when they were being; swept away by the small-pox; their bodies were found in one instance dead upon the bank of the river they had crossed by swimming when the fever of the disease had been at its height.  Those who live their lives quietly at home, who sleep in beds, and lay up when sickness comes upon them, know but little of what the human frame is capable of enduring if put to the test.  With us, to be ill is to lie down; not so with the Indian; he is never ill with the casual illnesses of our civilization:  when he lies down it is to sleep for a few hours, or-for ever.  Thus these Sircies had literally kept the war-trail till they died.  When the corn-fields were being cut around the mission, the reapers found unmistakable traces of how these wild men had kept the field undaunted by disease.  Long black hair was found where it had fallen from the head of some brave in the lairs from which he had watched the horses of his enemies; the ruling passion had been strong in death.  In the end, the much-coveted horses were carried off by the few survivors, and the mission had to bewail the loss of some of its best steeds.  One, a mare belonging to the missionary himself, had returned to her home after an absence of a few days, but she carried in her flank a couple of Sircie arrows.  She had broken away from the band, and the braves had sent their arrows after her in an attempt to kill what they could not keep.  To add to the-misfortunes of the settlement, the buffalo were far out in the great plains; so between disease, war, and famine, Victoria had had a hard time of it.

In the farmyard of the mission-house there lay-a curious block of metal of immense weight’; it was ringed,-deeply indented, and polished on the outer edges of the indentations by the wear and friction of many years.  Its history was a curious one.  Longer than any man could say, it had lain on the summit of a hill far out in the southern prairies.  It had been a medicine-stone of surpassing virtue among the Indians over a vast territory.  No tribe or portion of a tribe would pass in the vicinity without paying a visit to this great-medicine:  it was said to be increasing yearly in weight.  Old men remembered having heard old men say that they had once lifted it easily from the ground.  Now no single man could carry it.  And it was no wonder that this metallic stone should be a Manito-stone and an object of intense veneration to the Indian; it had come down from heaven; it did not belong to the earth, but had descended out of