Our work is to convert the wicked, to teach them to lead good, useful lives.

We will succeed." Jim could not help warming to the minister for his unswervable faith, his earnest belief that the work of God could not fail; nevertheless, while he felt no fear and intended to put all his heart in the work, he remembered with disquietude Colonel Zane's warnings.

He thought of the wonderful precaution and eternal vigilance of Jonathan and Wetzel--men of all men who most understood Indian craft and cunning.

It might well be possible that these good missionaries, wrapped up in saving the souls of these children of the forest, so full of God's teachings as to have little mind for aught else, had no knowledge of the Indian nature beyond what the narrow scope of their work invited.

If what these frontiersmen asserted was true, then the ministers' zeal had struck them blind.
Jim had a growing idea of the way in which the savages could be best taught.