“And why have you chosen this particular moment to tell me all this?  Has it any relation to your message—­to Bob—­to Major Willoughby, I mean?” demanded Mauo, nearly gasping for breath.

“No relation, tell you,” said Nick, a little angrily.  “Why make relation, when no relation at all.  Meredit’; no Willoughby.  Ask moder; ask major; ask chaplain—­all tell trut’!  No need to be so feelin’; no you fader, at all.”

“What can you—­what do you mean, Nick?  Why do you look so wild—­so fierce—­so kind—­so sorrowful—­so angry?  You must have bad news to tell me.”

“Why bad to you—­he no fader—­only fader friend.  You can’t help it—­fader die when you pappoose—­why you care, now, for dis?”

Maud now actually gasped for breath.  A frightful glimpse of the truth gleamed before her imagination, though it was necessarily veiled in the mist of uncertainty.  She became pale as death, and pressed her hand upon her heart, as if to still its beating.  Then, by a desperate effort, she became more calm, and obtained the power to speak.

“Oh! is it so, Nick!—­can it be so!” she said; “my father has fallen in this dreadful business?”

“Fader kill twenty year ago; tell you dat, how often?” answered the Tuscarora, angrily; for, in his anxiety to lessen the shock to Maud, for whom this wayward savage had a strange sentiment of affection, that had grown out of her gentle kindnesses to himself, on a hundred occasions, he fancied if she knew that Captain Willoughby was not actually her father, her grief at his loss would be less.  “Why you call dis fader, when dat fader.  Nick know fader and moder.—­Major no broder.”

Notwithstanding the sensations that nearly pressed her to the earth, the tell-tale blood rushed to Maud’s cheeks, again, at this allusion, and she bowed her face to her knees.  The action gave her time to rally her faculties; and catching a glimpse of the vast importance to all for her maintaining self-command, she was enabled to raise her face with something like the fortitude the Indian hoped to see.

“Trifle with me no longer, Wyandotte, but let me know the worst at once.  Is my father dead?—­By father, I mean captain Willoughby?”

“Mean wrong, den—­no fader, tell you.  Why young quaw so much like Mohawk?”

“Man—­is captain Willoughby killed?”

Nick gazed intently into Maud’s face for half a minute, and then he nodded an assent.  Notwithstanding all her resolutions to be steady, our heroine nearly sank under the blow.  For ten minutes she spoke not, but sat, her head bowed to her knees, in a confusion of thought that threatened a temporary loss of reason.  Happily, a flood of tears relieved her, and she became more calm.  Then the necessity of knowing more, in order that she might act intelligently, occurred to her mind, and she questioned Nick in a way to elicit all it suited the savage to reveal.