“Ough! ough! ough!” groaned the old woman, looking at him wistfully, and plainly struggling with herself—­hesitating between two courses.

“Speak!” said Verty, with a glow in his eye, which made him resemble a young leopard of the wild—­“speak, ma mere!—­I am no longer a child!  I go into a new land now, and how shall it be?  As a red face, or a long knife—­which am I?  Speak, ma mere—­say if I am a Delaware, whose place is the woods, or a white, whose life must take him from the deer forever!”

The struggle was ended; Verty could not have uttered words more fatal to his discovering anything.  He raised an insuperable barrier to any revelations—­if, indeed, there existed any mystery—­by his alternative.  Was he a Delaware, and thus doomed to live in the forest with his old Indian mother—­or was he a white, in which case, he would leave her?  Pride, cunning, above all, deep and pure affection, sealed the old woman’s lips, if she had thought of opening them.  She looked for sometime at Verty, then, taking his head between her hands, she said, with eyes full of tears: 

“You are my own dear son—­my young, beautiful hawk of the woods—­who said you were not a true Delaware!”

And the old woman bent down, and with a look of profound affection, pressed her lips to Verty’s forehead.

The young man’s face assumed an expression of mingled gloom and doubt, and he sighed.  Then he was an Indian—­a Delaware—­the son of the Indian woman—­he was not a paleface.  All the talk about it was thrown away; he was born in the woods—­would live and die in the woods!

For a moment the image of Redbud rose before him, and he sighed.  He knew not why, but he wished that he was not an Indian—­he wished that his blood had been that of the whites.

His sad face drooped; then his eyes ware raised, and he saw the old woman weeping.

The sight removed from Verty’s mind all personal considerations, and he leaned his head upon her knee, and pressed her hand to his lips.

“Did the child make his mother weep,” he said; “did his idle words bring rain to her eyes, and make her heart heavy?  But he is her child still, and all the world is nothing to him.”

Verty rose, and taking the old, withered hand, placed it respectfully on his breast.

“Never again, ma mere” he said, “will the wind talk to me, or the birds whisper.  I will not listen.  Have I made your eyes dark?  Let it pass away—­I am your son—­I love you—­more than all the whole wide world.”

And Verty sat down, and gazed tenderly at the old woman, whose face had assumed an expression of extraordinary delight.

“Listen,” said Verty, taking down his old violin, with a smile, “I will play one of the old tunes, which blow like a wind from my childhood—­happy childhood.”

And the young man gazed for a moment, silent and motionless, into the fire.  Then he raised his old, battered instrument, and began to play one of the wild madrigals of the border.