But, she saw it all now; and not more desolate was the lonely pine on the mountain, with the wind sobbing and shrieking through its branches, than the soul of that proud, crushed woman at that moment.
Proceeding at once to her chamber, where she had left her boy asleep, she found his little couch of furs vacant—he was gone—was not there to receive her parting kiss! Thus was the cup of her agony made full, but, in her self-abasement, she felt that it was just the outraged father should have removed him. Mahaska sunk upon a seat and gave way to her great grief. Ah, it was terrible to witness. Such grief could only come from the conscience-stricken, from the wretch conscious of his own debasement past all redemption. For an hour she remained in her fearful agony—not over her wrecked fortunes, over her lost empire, over the detection of her true character and her humiliating exposure, for all these things her fierce nature could bear; but that she was an outcast, scorned by the savage who had loved her like a Spartan, despised by the race among whom she had come as prophet and queen, and, more than all, that she, a mother, was childless as well as a banished, disgraced wife—all these made her hour of agony one passing all words to depict. That hour had one redeeming virtue—it proved that she was a woman, and taught us to know that beneath the fury of the most violent natures is a deep of humanity and purity which will assert itself at the propitious moment.
At length Mahaska arose, gathered up some of the child’s little garments and some of her own clothing, which she made up into a light bundle. Then she took from the drawer of her dressing-case a purse of gold, and her jewels, which she placed in her bosom. A tomahawk and jeweled dagger she cast upon the floor, but, thinking a moment, she picked up the dagger and placed it in her belt. This completed her preparations for the exile; like Hagar, she was banished, but, unlike the Jewess, she had no child to comfort her and to suffer with her. Bestowing one long, agonizing look upon the child’s bed, murmuring his name in tones of endearment, she passed out of the castle, by the door looking out upon the lake. Her canoe she pushed off the sands, and, entering it, swept off over the waters just as darkness began to make somber shadows in the forests. Away she sped—out into the gloom until suddenly she vanished from sight, whether swallowed up in the deep waters or caught up into the clouds the Senecas could not divine. They had watched her departure in awe and in fear, for their superstitious souls still were filled with images of her divinity; and when the canoe suddenly vanished it was only to confirm their impression of her league with spirits—whether with the good or the bad spirits, they did not care to say.
The next morning Mahaska’s canoe was seen floating on the bosom of the water in the center of the lake, but she was gone. It was brought to the shore and given to Gi-en-gwa-tah. The chief received it as a token of her final departure and placed it in the castle. Then he closed the building and it was left in all its loneliness, sitting upon the shore of the lake like a watcher daily and nightly awaiting for its mistress to come again, but she came not.
Mahaska, the Indian Queen, was no more.
THE END.
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS’
JUVENILE BOOKS.