"And is this wild feeling at the bottom of it all?" said Barbara, in a voice full of regret.
"It has brought me across the ocean, lurking like a hound in the hold of the same vessel with yourself—it has filled me with ambition to rebuild the fortunes of a down-trodden people. When these brave men they call savages are linked in one common band and common cause—like the chieftains of Scotland, each a sovereign lord in himself—we shall meet these wily white men, and conquer back the forests they have wrested from us. Hitherto their brain-craft has more than overmatched our strong arms; but I have learned something of their coward wisdom in the lands to which you have sent me. If I studied law and military science in England, it was that I might learn the art by which men rule their fellow-men. I have used the means you gave me to learn that power of mind which sways multitudes more surely than the stout arm or certain eye. Lady, I have, in my search for the great secret by which your people stole away the Indian birthright, learned to despise our conquerors. But not you! not you! My gratitude lifted you out from among them all. It was because my soul thanked you so tenderly that it lost itself in love."
"Ah, Philip," said the lady, "but for this madness how great you might become!"
"Say not so. All the thirst for greatness that I have springs out of the mighty love that you will not listen to," answered the young man.
"Because it is madness—insanity. I say nothing of the barriers which rank and civilization build up like a wall between us two; but nature herself should chill such feelings in their birth. Why, young man, I had learned to hope and suffer, as woman can alone hope and suffer, before you were born."
"Be it so—I care not. Souls made for eternity are neither brightened nor dulled by a few years of time. I see only what is grand and beautiful in the only woman of her race that this heart ever deemed worthy of a warrior's love."
The young man towered proudly upward as he spoke. The gorgeous robe which he had assumed with his savage state, shook and rattled as he gathered it over his chest. The lady gazed upon him with irresistible admiration. She might rebuke his love, and shrink with womanly delicacy from any fulfilment of his hopes, which, in truth, seemed to outrage the august dignity of her years. But there was a grandeur in the young man that forced her to respect him—a truthfulness which enlisted all her sympathies.
"Philip," she said, extending her hand, which he kissed reverently, as if she had been an empress, and that moss couch her throne, "I will not bid you God-speed in the grand, but I think hopeless, task you have undertaken, much as I deem you wronged; because my judgment, calmer than yours, tells me how surely civilization must sweep the darkness of barbarism before it. The virgin soil of this new world is required for the growth of food for the surplus population which is now sweeping across the Atlantic in a slow but steady tide from the old world. That which civilization demands it will attain. Hope not to match the bravery of your warriors against the keen energy of the Anglo-Saxon. Where he treads, opposition, nay, justice itself, sways backward. Cool, resolute, sometimes unscrupulous, he never recedes, but swiftly as time advances so does he. Look along the coast already has he hewn down the mighty forest, and let the sunshine in to ripen the grain planted within sight of your very wigwams. Already are cities and towns sending up their spires to heaven. Every courthouse, and every place of worship thus marked in the landscape, is a barrier stronger than any military fortress, against the idea of Indian sovereignty that now heaves that chest, and kindles those eyes."
The young man's lip curved, and his eyes shone as he answered:
"Lady, forgive me; but you speak like a woman, whose destiny is to think, not to act. But in my heart the barbarism out of which true heroes spring, and the Anglo-Saxon blood of which you boast, meet and swell together into one mighty resolve. We will first conquer our foes; then wrest from them the secrets that make the soil teem with food and beauty for their use. While the earth rolls, and the sun shines, brave men of all nations will seek the war-path; the church spires and halls of justice will never prevent that. But, like the white man, we will plant corn where the earth has been made richest with human blood, and let wild flowers start into bloom above the graves we have filled to loathing with dead foes."