Unconsciously the missionary looked at the deformed girl as he spoke. The Indians followed his glance, and changed their defiant gestures.
“He speaks well. Mineto has sent his beautiful medicine spirit to guard him from our rifles. The medicine father of the Shawnees is dead, his lodge is empty. The white bird shall be our prophet. You shall be her brother, live in the great Medicine Lodge, and dream our dreams for us when we take the warpath. Do we speak well?”
The missionary pondered a moment before he spoke. He read more in these words than one not acquainted with Indian customs might have understood.
“Yes,” he said at last, “I will come to your Medicine Lodge, and tell you all the dreams which the Great Spirit sends to me. She, too, will love the Indians, and dream holy dreams for them, but not here, not in the Medicine Lodge. She must stay in Monockonok among the broken waters. The Great Spirit has built her lodge there, under the tall trees, where the Indians can seek her in their canoes. Go back to your council-fire, my children, before its smoke goes out. I will light the calumet, and smoke with you. Now the Great Spirit tells me to go with this child back to Monockonok. Farewell.”
He took Mary Derwent by the hand, turned his back on the menacing rifles without fear, and walked away unmolested.
Mary had wandered miles away from home; nothing but the superior knowledge of her guardian could have found her way back through all that dense and unequal forest. It was now almost nightfall; but a full moon had risen, and by its light this man, accustomed to the woods, guided their way back towards the river. But after the wildest of her excitement had worn away, Mary began to feel the toil of her long walk. She did not complain, however, and the missionary was unconscious of this overtax of strength till she sank down on a broken fragment of rock utterly exhausted. He stopped in great distress, and bent over her. She smiled, and attempted to speak, but the pale lids drooped over her eyes, and the strength ebbing completely from her limbs left them pale and limp. She lay before him entirely senseless, with the moonbeams falling over her like a winding-sheet.
Nothing but the angels of Heaven could see or understand the look of unutterable thankfulness which came to his noble features as the missionary stooped and took the young girl in his arms. A smile luminous as the moonlight that played upon it stole over his whole face, and the words that broke from his lips were sweet and tender, such as the Madonna might have whispered to her holy child.
He took no pains to bring her back to life, but when she did come to, soothed her with hushes, and laid her head tenderly upon his shoulder till she fell asleep, smiling like himself.
As he came in sight of Monockonok a swell of regretful tenderness swept all his strength away more surely than fatigue could have done. He sat down upon a fallen tree on the bank just opposite the island and looked down into the sweet face with a gaze of heavenly affection. His head drooped slowly down, he folded her closer, and pressed his lips upon the closed eyes, the forehead, the lips, and cheeks of the sleeping child with a passion of tenderness that shook his whole frame.
“Oh, my God, my God! forgive me if this is sinful! my soul aches under this excess of love; the very fountains of my life are breaking up! Father of heaven, I am thine, all thine, but she is here on my breast, and I am but human.”