’My brother is angry.  His zeal for the honor of Mahneto has made him forget his respect for the Sachem and the Sachem’s adopted son.  The life of the white stranger was spared that he might bring joy to the mournful eyes of Oriana.  He has done so.  My daughter smiles again, and it is well.  Coubitant may go.’

He then resumed his pipe, and, closing his eyes again, gave himself up to the drowsy contemplations, which the entrance of Coubitant had interrupted; and the disappointed warrior retired with a scowl on his dark brow, and aggravated malice in his still darker heart.

CHAPTER VIII.

‘They proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord’ JER.  IX, 3.

The indifference of Tisquantum on the subject of the religious opinions that his daughter might imbibe from her Christian companion, may seem strange.  But the Sachem, though a heathen, was, in fact, no fanatic.  He believed—­or professed to believe—­that he was himself in the possession of supernatural powers; and so long as these pretensions were acknowledged, and he continued to enjoy the confidence and veneration of his ignorant countrymen, he was perfectly satisfied.  Henrich had also, on their first acquaintance, distinctly professed his faith in the existence and the power of the Great Mahneto, or Master of Life; and this was all the religion—­properly so called—­of which Tisquantum had any idea.  He did not, therefore, give himself any concern as to the other objects of his adopted son’s belief or worship; neither did he care to prevent Oriana from listening to the doctrines of the pale-face, so long as she continued obedient and gentle, and neglected none of the duties of an Indian squaw.

The feelings of Coubitant were different.  Not only did he burn with an eager desire to deprive his rival of the Sachem’s love and esteem, but he also entertained a strong abhorrence of the religion of the white men, as he had seen it practiced, and knew it was disseminated, by the Spanish settlers in Mexico, whither he had traveled in his early youth.  In his eyes, these Christians were base idolaters; for such was the impression made on him by the images and crucifixes that he beheld, and the marks of veneration that were paid to these idols of wood and stone, by the superstitious and degenerate Spaniards of that district.  When, therefore, he heard Henrich endeavoring to inculcate the worship of Jesus, as the Son of God, on Oriana and Jyanough, he not unnaturally regarded him as a believer in all the deities whose images he had seen associated with that of Jesus, and receiving equal homage.