Regularly every month, Fluellina, accompanied by her son, visited a Moravian missionary who dwelt with his family on the site of the once flourishing station of Gnadenhutten, where, in 1782, was enacted one of the darkest episodes in American history.  It was here the infamous monster, Colonel Williamson, murdered the one hundred Moravian Indians—­a crime for which it seems a just God would have smitten him and his followers to the earth.  Here this faithful Huron woman and her son received instruction in holy things from the aged missionary—­a white man who alone knew the relation which she bore to the famous Huron, Oonomoo, and who never betrayed it to his dying day.  By this means, her regular visits were rendered safe and free from the annoyance of being watched—­an exemption she never could have had, had any one else suspected the truth.

Fluellina succeeded in inducing her husband to visit this missionary on several occasions, when he proved an attentive listener to the aged disciple of God.  He took in every doctrine and subscribed to every truth except one—­that of loving his enemies.  He believed he never could love the Shawnees—­they who had first caused his father to be broken of his chiefdom, and then had murdered his mother.  He had sworn eternal hatred against them, and in the interior of his lodge hung such an incredible number of their scalps that we decline to name it—­knowing that we should be suspected of trifling with the credulity of our readers.  He had never taken the scalp of a white man, and would promise never to harm any being except the Shawnees; but, toward them his feelings must be those of the deadliest enmity.

The sublime truths of the great Book of books, its glorious promises, and its awful mysteries, thrilled the soul of the Huron to its center, and many a time when wandering alone through the great, solemn forests, he felt his spirit expanding within him, until his eyes overflowed, and he, the mighty, scarred warrior, wept like a child.  The sweet instruction, too, of the gentle Fluellina had not been lost entirely upon him.  It was owing to these that for a year he had not taken the scalp of a Shawnee, though he had been sorely tempted and had slain more than one.  He could not yet bring himself to the point of letting them go free altogether.

With this somewhat lengthy parenthesis, we will now return to the present visit of the Huron to his island home.

Oonomoo was about to pass into the interior of the lodge, when a light exclamation caught his ear.  As he turned his head, Fluellina came bounding to his arms.  However stoical and indifferent the North American Indian may appear in the presence of his companions or of white men, it is a mistake to suppose that he is wanting either in the ordinary affections of humanity, or in those little demonstrations of love so peculiar to our own race.  Deep in the woods, when alone with their families, they throw off restraint and are warriors no more—­but men.  The little child is dandled on the knee, or sported with upon the grass, and the proud mother receives her share of her husband’s caresses.  Great as may be the glory of the savage in the hunt and chase, his happiness in the bosom of his own family is unsurpassed by any other enjoyment which ever falls to his lot.