“Yes, he sleeps; speak in English, and have no fear.”
Catharine went to the heap of blazing pine and flung ashes on it; then returned to her daughter, folded her to her bosom, and for half an hour the low voice of Tahmeroo alone broke the stillness of the lodge.
Scarcely had Catharine interrupted the confession of her child with a word of question. She must have been powerless from emotion, for more than once her breath came quick and gaspingly; and the heavy throbbing of her heart was almost audible at every pause in that broken narrative. Yet her voice was strangely cold and calm when she spoke.
“And you saw him again this day?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Did he tell you to keep these meetings from my knowledge?”
“He said the Great Spirit would visit me with his thunder if I but whispered it to the wind.”
“The name—tell me the name once more; but low, I would not hear it aloud. Whisper it in my ear—yet the hiss of a serpent were sweeter,” she muttered.
Tahmeroo raised her lips to her mother’s ear and whispered, as she was commanded. She felt a slight shudder creep over the frame against which she leaned, and all was still again.
“You first saw this—this man when we were at the encampment on the banks of Seneca Lake three moons since, and I was absent on a mission to Sir William Johnson: did I hear aright in this?” questioned the mother, after a few minutes of silence.