The smile returned to Henrich’s eyes, as he listened to this fond appeal; and he almost reproached himself for ever suffering regret for the blessings he had lost to arise in his mind, when those he still possessed were so many and so great.

‘Dear Oriana, you need not fear,’ he replied, affectionately; ’I speak the truth of my heart when I tell you that I would not exchange my Indian home, and sacrifice my Indian squaw, and my little half-bred son, for all the comforts and pleasures of civilized life—­no, not even to be restored to the parents I still love so dearly, and the brother and sister who played with me in childhood.  But still I yearn to look upon their faces again, and to hear once more their words of love.  I well know how they have all mourned for me:  and I know how, even after so many years have passed, they would rejoice at finding me again!’

’Yes; they must indeed have mourned for you, Henrich.  That must have been a sad night to them when Coubitant bore you away.  But I owe all the happiness of my life to that cruel deed—­and can I regret it?  If my “white brother” had not come to our camp, I should have lived and died an ignorant Indian squaw—­I should have known no thing of true religion, or of the Christian’s God—­and,’ continued Oriana, smiling at her husband with a sweetness and archness of expression that made her countenance really beautiful, ‘I should never have known my Henrich.’

‘Child!’ said old Tisquantum, rousing himself from the half-dreamy reverie in which he had been sitting, and enjoying the warm sunbeams as they fell on his now feeble limbs, and long white hair.  ’Child, are you talking again of Henrich leaving us?  It is wrong of you to doubt him.  My son has given me his word that he will never take you from me until Mahneto recalls my spirit to himself, and I dwell again with my fathers.  Has he not also said that he will never leave or forsake you and his boy?  Why, then, do you make your heart sad?  Henrich has never deceived us—­he has never, in all the years that he has lived in our wigwam, and shared our wanderings, said the thing that was not:  and shall we suspect him now?  No, Oriana; I trust him as I would have trusted my own Tekoa:  and had my brave boy lived he could not have been dearer to me than Henrich is.  He could not have surpassed him in hunting or in war:  he could not have guided and governed my people with more wisdom, now that I am too old and feeble to be their leader:  and he could not have watched over my declining years with more of gentleness and love.  Henrich will never desert us:  no, not if we return to the head-quarters of our tribe near Paomet,[*] as I hope to do ere I close my eyes in death.  So long as I feared my white son would leave us, and return to his own people, I never turned my feet towards Paomet; for he had wound himself into my heart, and had taken Tekoa’s place there:  and I saw that he had wound himself into your heart too, my