“But how can you attain to the knowledge of the white men, without becoming like them?”

“My brother must not be angry when Sassacus says, that is a pappoose question.  See!  I can teach my brother to make bows and shoot arrows.  Can he not instruct Sassacus how to make guns, and the little black seeds which cause the lightning?”

“That is not so easy as thou thinkest.  I know not myself how to make guns, and the powder which thou callest seeds.”

“Toh!” replied the Indian, shaking his head, “my brother is afraid Sassacus might hurt himself with the lightning.”

“Why should the chief doubt my word?  I tell thee that only certain men among us make guns.  They are all brought from a great island beyond the sea.”

“The English are very cunning.  They make them in secret, so that the Indians may not learn.”

“It grieves me that my friend thinks I speak to him with two tongues.  But I will not be offended.  Are we not brothers?”

“When my brother loves Sassacus more he will tell him all about these things, and they will then have one head and one heart.”

“They both belong to Sassacus now.  But what does he intend to do?  Will he return with me to Boston?”

“Let my brother go to Shawmut, and if there is any danger he will let me know, Sassacus will remain.”

“You judge rightly.  There were peril in showing thyself there now.  But how shall I find thee again?”

“When my brother journeys in the forest, and would see Sassacus, let him make a noise like the Gues-ques-kes-cha, and Sassacus, or one of his sanops will find him.”  He whistled the peculiar note of the bird, (the robin,) and smiled at the awkward imitation of Arundel.

“Good for Indian.  My sanops, when they hear, will know who is the Gues-ques-kes-cha.”

Thus parted the two friends.  As Arundel pursued his lonely way, he kept running over in his mind the events of the day before, and of the past night.  He admired the sagacity and courage of the Pequot Sachem, who, assisted either by his own men, or friendly Aberginians, had been able to take a bloody revenge for the attempt on his life.  But no satisfactory reason occurred to him why the body of Pieskaret should have been fastened to the raft.  It seemed a wanton act of bravado, which he could not reconcile with the known qualities of Sassacus.  Concealment and not exposure, he thought, should have been the policy, but on the contrary, the very course had been adopted most likely to lead to discovery.  Why again, he thought, is the chief of a distant tribe lurking in these woods?  He surely can cherish no evil design against the colony, for there is no misunderstanding betwixt the English and the Pequots.