“Juss so—­full of cur’osity.  Squaw is squaw—­no matter what color.”

“I am sorry, Peter, you do not think better of squaws.  Perhaps you never had a squaw—­no wife, or daughter?”

A gleam of powerful feeling shot athwart the dark countenance of the Indian, resembling the glare of the electric fluid flashing on a cloud at midnight; but it passed away as quickly as it appeared, leaving in its stead the hard, condensed expression, which the intensity of a purpose so long entertained and cultivated, had imprinted there, as indelibly as if cut in stone.

“All chief have squaw—­all chief have pappoose—­” was the answer that came at last.  “What he good for, eh?”

“It is always good to have children, Peter; especially when the children themselves are good.”

“Good for pale-face, maybe—­no good for Injin.  Pale-face glad when pappoose born—­red-skin sorry.”

“I hope this is not so.  Why should an Injin be sorry to see the laugh of his little son?”

“Laugh when he little—­p’raps so; he little, and don’t know what happen.  But Injin don’t laugh any more when he grow up.  Game gone; land gone; corn-field gone.  No more room for Injin—­pale-face want all.  Pale-face young man laugh—­red-skin young man cry.  Dat how it is.”

“Oh!  I hope not, Peter!  I should be sorry to think it was so.  The red man has as good a right—­nay, he has a better right to this country than we whites; and God forbid that he should not always have his full share of the land!”

Margery probably owed her life to that honest, natural burst of feeling, which was uttered with a warmth and sincerity that could leave no doubt that the sentiment expressed came from the heart.  Thus singularly are we constructed!  A minute before, and no exemption was made in the mind of Peter, in behalf of this girl, in the plan he had formed for cutting off the whites; on the contrary, he had often be-thought him of the number of young pale-faces that might be, as it were, strangled in their cradles, by including the bee-hunter and his intended squaw in the contemplated sacrifice.  All this was changed, as in the twinkling of an eye, by Margery’s honest and fervent expression of her sense of right, on the great subject that occupied all of Peter’s thoughts.  These sudden impulses in the direction of love for our species, the second of the high lessons left by the Redeemer to his disciples, are so many proofs of the creation of man in the image of his maker.  They exert their power often when least expected, and are ever stamped by the same indelible impression of their divine origin.  Without these occasional glimpses at those qualities which are so apt to lie dormant, we might indeed despair of the destinies of our race.  We are, however, in safe and merciful hands; and all the wonderful events that are at this moment developing themselves around us, are no other than the steps taken by Providence in the progress it is steadily making toward the great and glorious end!  Some of the agencies will be corrupt; others deluded; and no one of them all, perhaps, will pursue with unerring wisdom the precise path that ought to be taken; but even the crimes, errors, and delusions, will be made instrumental in achieving that which was designed before the foundations of this world were laid!