The Indian listened with great attention, and upon the other pausing, said: 

“Has the Manitou told all these things to my brother?”

“No, Indian; the Great Spirit speaks not now to his people as he did when the world was young.  But,” he added, as if struck with the folly of continuing a conversation of this character, “the path is long that led me to this truth, and it would weary thy feet to travel it.”

“My brother is wise, and cannot lie, and I am a child.  My ears drink in his words.  The legs of my brother are long, and he has been a great traveller.  Was it near the rising sun he learned the language of the red man?”

“Indian, I have never been nearer the rising sun than thou.  But tell me the object of thy visit.  Why dost thou seek me now, when but a few days since thou didst chide the squaw for her willingness to oblige me?”

“The lips of Ohquamehud spoke folly.  He did not then know that this brother had talked to the Master of Life, who granted to him the life of Huttamoiden’s child.  The blood of Huttamoiden runs in these veins.”

The explanation was perfectly natural, and whatever suspicion had arisen in Holden’s mind vanished.  It seemed not surprising that the Indian, who also, by uttering his name, had proclaimed himself a Pequot, should be willing to form the acquaintance of one who had proved himself a friend to his tribe, and probably was invested in his imagination with the qualities of a “great medicine.”  But, though to Holden’s high-wrought fancies, the recovery of the boy had seemed miraculous, and he could not avoid connecting his prayers with it, yet he shrank from directly claiming so great a power as the Indian ascribed to him.

“The issues of life and death are with the Great Spirit,” he said.  “At his pleasure he breathes into our nostrils, and we live; or he turns away his face, and we die.  Let not my brother give too much credit to a worm.”

The wily Indian, from the other’s altered tone and manner, perceived his advantage, and was not slow to use it.

“Because my white brother loved his red brethren, he sought them in their lodges, and there they taught him their language.  So when the boy was departing for the happy hunting grounds, my brother remembered their kindness, and held the child by the hand, and would not let him go.”

The face of the Solitary worked with emotion while the other was speaking.

“Would that I could explain,” he said.  “But thou art unable to understand.  How canst thou know a Christian heart?”

“The heart of Ohquamehud is a man’s.”

“Aye; but a savage knows not, and despises forgiveness.  I was a stately pine, whose branches mingled with the clouds, and the birds came and lodged therein.  And a storm arose, and thunders rolled, and the lightning struck it, and its pride and glory tumbled to the ground.  And it was burnt up, all save this blasted trunk.”  He uttered this with a wild frenzy, and as if hardly conscious of the presence of another.