“Peace, Quadaquina,” said his mother.  “Ohquamehud is not now the slave of the fire-water.  Go,” she added, detecting, with a mother’s sagacity, the tumult in the mind of the high-spirited boy, “and return not until thou hast tamed thine anger.  Wolves dwell not in the cabin of Peena.”

The boy, with downcast eyes, and obedient to his mother, left the hut.

In explanation of this scene we may say, that, unhappily, like most Indians, Ohquamehud was addicted to the use of spirituous liquors, his indulgence in the fiery gratification being limited only by his inability at all times to obtain it.  Although unable to indulge his appetite in the cabin of Esther, he occasionally procured strong liquors in the huts of the other Indians, with whom the practice of taking stimulants was almost universal, and sometimes in such quantities as utterly to lose his reason.  Returned on one of these occasions, he demanded rum from Esther, and, upon her refusal to give it, struck her a blow.  This so exasperated the boy, Quadaquina, who was present, that, with a club, he prostrated the drunken man, which, indeed, in the condition he was in, was not difficult, and would, had he not been restrained by Peena, have inflicted a serious injury, if not killed him.  Ohquamehud never knew that he had been struck, but ascribed the violent pain in his head the next day to the fire-water, and the contusion to a fall.  Peena, while lamenting the excesses of her relative, felt little or no resentment towards him; but not so with the boy.  He despised Ohquamehud for the miserable exhibitions of imbecility he made in his cups, and hated him for the violence to his mother.

“Look,” said Peena, pointing to the articles, and desirous to remove the rising discontent from the mind of the Indian, “the heart of the young Longbeard (for she had no other name for Pownal in her language) is large.  All these he took out of it for Peena.”

“Accursed be the gifts of the pale faces!” exclaimed Ohquamehud.  “For such rags our fathers sold our hunting-grounds, and gave permission to the strangers to build walls in the rivers so that the fish cannot swim up.”

“Peena sold nothing for these,” said the squaw, mildly.  “Because the young Longbeard loved Peena he gave them all to her.”

“Did not Peena preserve his life?  But she is right.  The white face has an open hand, and pays more for his life than it is worth.”

“The words of my husband’s brother are very bitter.  What has the boy whom Huttamoiden’s arm saved from the flames, done, that blackness should gather over the face of Ohquamehud?”

“Quah!  Does Peena ask?  She is more foolish than the bird, from which she takes her name, when it flies into a tree.  Is he not the son of Onontio?”

“Peena never saw Onontio.  She has only heard of him as one, who like the red men, loves scalps.  The Longbeard is a man of peace, and loves them not.  The eyes of Ohquamehud are getting dim.”