“From the Indian woman?”

“Yes, from her.”

Mr. Rushton turns pale, and falls into a chair.

Verty hastens to him.

The lawyer rises, and gazes at him with pale lips, passes his hand over his brow with nervous, trembling haste.  He holds the necklace up before Verty there, and says, in a husky voice—­

“Where did your mother get this?”

Verty gazes at the necklace, and shakes his head.

“I don’t know, sir—­I don’t know that it is her’s—­I think I have seen it though—­yes, yes, long, long ago—­somewhere!”

And the young hunter’s head droops, thoughtfully—­his dreamy eyes seem to wander over other years.

Then he raises his head and says, abruptly: 

“I had a strange thought, sir!  I thought I saw myself—­only I was a little child—­playing with that necklace somewhere in a garden—­oh, how strange!  There were walks with box, and tulip beds, and in the middle, a fountain—­strange!  I thought I saw Indians, too—­and heard a noise—­why, I am dreaming!”

The lawyer looks at Verty with wild eyes, which, slowly, very slowly, fill with a strange light, which makes the surrounding personages keep silent—­so singular is this rapt expression.

A thought is rising on the troubled and agitated mind of the lawyer, like a moon soaring above the horizon.  He trembles, and does not take his eyes for a moment from the young man’s face.

“A fountain—­Indians?” he mutters, almost inarticulately.

“Yes, yes!” says Verty, with dreamy eyes, and crouching, so to speak, Indian fashion, until his tangled chestnut curls half cover his cheeks—­“yes, yes!—­there again!—­why it is magic—­there!  I see it all—­I remember it!  I must have seen it!  Redbud!” he said, turning to the young girl with a frightened air, “am I dreaming?”

Redbud would have spoken.  Mr. Rushton, with a sign, bade her be silent.  He looked at the young man with the same strange look, and said in a low tone: 

“Must have seen what?”

“Why, this!” said Verty, half extending his arm, and pointing toward a far imaginary horizon, on which his dreamy eyes were fixed—­“this! don’t you see it?  My tribe! my Delawares—­there in the woods!  They attack the house, and carry off the child in the garden playing with the necklace.  His nurse is killed—­poor thing! her blood is on the fountain!  Now they go into the great woods with the child, and an Indian woman takes him and will not let them kill him—­he is so pretty with his long curls like the sunshine:  you might take him for a girl!  The Indian woman holds before him a bit of looking-glass, stolen from the house!  Look! they will have his life—­oh!”

And crouching, with an exclamation of terror, Verty shuddered.

“Give me my rifle!” he cried; “they are coming there!  Back!”

And the young man rose erect, with flashing eyes.

“The woman flies in the night,” he continues, becoming calm again; “they pursue her—­she escapes with the boy—­they come to a deserted lodge—­a lodge! a lodge!  Why, it is our lodge in the hills!  It’s ma mere! and I was that child!  Am I mad?”