“Yet,” she continued, seating herself, “it pleaseth me to receive thy thanks.”

Now she put aside her grown-up air and her curious glances were those of the child she was.  She fingered gently the sleeve of his doublet stained by the morass in which he had been captured and torn by the briars of the forests through which he had been led.

“’Tis good English cloth,” he remarked, “to have withstood such storm, and I bless the sheep on whose backs it grew.”

“What beasts are those?” she queried, and Smith endeavored to explain the various uses and the looks of Southdown flocks.

“Did thy squaws make thy coat for thee when thou hadst slain that—­that new beast?”

“I have no squaw, little Princess.”

“I am glad,” she sighed.

“And why?”

“I do not know”, her brow wrinkling as she tried to fathom her own feelings.  “Perhaps it is because now thou wilt not pine for her and to be gone from amongst us.”

“But I must leave here soon, little maid; my people at Jamestown are waiting for me.”

He said this in order to try and discern what was the intention of Powhatan towards him.  Now that his life was saved, his thought was for his liberty.

“Thou shalt not go,” she cried, springing up.  “Thou belongest to me and it is my will to keep thee that thou mayst tell me tales of the world beyond the sunrise and make new medicine for us.  Thou shalt not go.”

“So be it,” said Smith in a tone he tried to render as unemotional as possible.  He sighed inwardly as he thought of his fellows at Jamestown, ill, starving, and now doubtless believing him dead.  Perhaps if he bided his time he would find some way of communicating with them.  In the meantime, policy, as well as inclination, urged his making friends with this eager little savage maiden.

Now that he did not attempt to oppose her, Pocahontas sank down again beside him.  Already there was an audience:  braves, squaws and children were crowding about, watching the paleface eat.  Smith had learned since his captivity the value the Indians set upon an impassive manner, so he continued cutting off bits of venison and chewing them with as little attention to those about him as King James himself might show when he dined in state alone at Guildhall.  But for Pocahontas’s presence, whose claim to the captive every one respected, they would have come even nearer.  As it was, one boy slipped behind her and jerked at Smith’s beard.  Pocahontas ordered him away and said in excuse: 

“Do not be angry, he wanted only to find out if it were fast.”

She shared the child’s curiosity in regard to the beard.  Might it not be, she wondered, some kind of adornment put on when he set out on the warpath, as her people decked themselves on special occasions with painted masks?