‘Father!’ she cried—­and now she spoke so rapidly and energetically, that Henrich could only guess the purport of her words, and read it in her sweet expressive countenance—­’Father! do not slay the white boy.  He says that he is doomed to die because his father caused my brother’s death.  But surely Tekoa’s generous spirit does not ask the blood of a child.  My brother is now happy in the great hunting grounds where our fathers dwell.  He feels no wrath against his slayer’s son:  he never would have sought revenge against an innocent boy.  Give me the captive, O my father! and let him grow up in our lodge, and be to me a playfellow and a brother.’

Tisquantum gazed at his child in wonder, and his countenance softened.  She saw that he was moved and hastily turning from him, she approached Henrich, who had risen from the couch, and now stood an earnest spectator of the scene, on the issue of which his life or death, humanly speaking, depended.  She took his band, and led him to her father, and again pleaded earnestly and passionately for his life; while the touching expression of his own deep blue eyes, and the beauty of his fair young face, added greatly to the power of her appeal.

I have a little sister at home,’ said Henrich—­and the soft Indian language sounded sweetly from his foreign lips—­’and she will weep for me as Oriana has wept for her brother.  Let me return to Patupet, and she and my parents will bless you.’

At the mention of his parents, Tisquantum’s brow grew dark again.  He thought of Rodolph as the destroyer of his son; and he turned away from the two youthful suppliants, whose silent eloquence he felt he could not long resist.

‘Your father killed my young Tekoa,’ he replied.  ’His fire weapon quenched the light of my lodge, and took from me the support of my old age.  Should I have pity on his son?’

‘But let him dwell in our lodge, and fill my brother’s vacant place!’ exclaimed Oriana.  ’Do not send him back to the white men; and his father, and his mother, and his little sister will still weep for him, and believe him dead.’

The same idea had crossed Tisquantum’s breast.  He looked again at the boy, and thought how much Oriana’s life would be cheered by such a companion.  His desire of revenge on Rodolph would also be gratified by detaining his child, and bringing him up as an Indian, so long as his parents believed that he had met with a bloody death; and, possibly, he felt a time might come when the possession of an English captive might prove advantageous to himself and his tribe.  All fear of the boy’s escaping to his friends was removed from his mind; for he was about to retire from that part of the country to a wild district far to the west, and to join his allies, the Pequodees, in a hunting expedition to some distant prairies.  The portion of his tribe over which he was Sachem, or chief, was willing to accompany him; and he had no intention of returning again to the neighborhood of the English intruders, who, he clearly foresaw, would ere long make themselves masters of the soil; and who had already secured to themselves such powerful allies in the Wampanoges—­the enemies and rivals of the Nausetts.