Mahaska’s prudence would not allow a fire to be kindled, although there was no probability that their pursuers could be anywhere within the neighborhood, but she was determined to run no risks where her hapless captive was concerned. Adèle was taken off her horse and seated upon a pile of blankets near Mahaska’s tent. The moonlight was sufficient to make every object distinctly visible, and, as she sat there in the vacancy of her despair, she could see the woman moving briskly about, superintending every arrangement, doubling the usual number of sentinels, appointing a portion of her guard to watch near her place of repose, and employing every means of security that vigilance, sharpened by revenge, could devise.
They placed food before the captive; but at first she turned from it with sickly loathing, and again Gi-en-gwa-tah passed her, and she heard him whisper rapidly in broken French:
“Let the pale-face eat—she will need much strength before the dawn comes.”
She could not repress one start; he moved on with a warning gesture, and seated himself with his back toward her at a considerable distance. She took up the piece of bark upon which the food had been spread, and ate eagerly of the corn-bread and dried venison; she had been so many hours without food, that the supper brought back an increase of strength, and the new hope which stirred her heart added sudden vitality to her frame.
While she was sitting there, Mahaska approached and stood looking down upon her with an icy smile.
“This is not like the castle to which the Governor’s wife is accustomed, and in which my mother pined herself to death,” she said, with cruel sarcasm; “Mahaska hopes to receive the lady in her own palace before many days.”
Adèle made no answer; she was looking in the woman’s face, wondering if it could indeed be real—if she saw before her the girl in whose arms she had so often slept in peace and affection, with whom she had shared every hope and joy, and whose happiness had been the chief study of her young life.
“Can you, indeed, be Katharine!” she exclaimed, involuntarily, giving expression to her thoughts.
“The pale-face mistakes,” returned Mahaska, with a warning quiver in her voice; “I am Mahaska, queen of the Senecas, a prophetess among the Six Nations. If the whites gave her another name, she flung it in the dirt with every thing else that was theirs.”
“But you were once my friend,” cried Adèle, nerved by desperation to make one last effort to touch her heart. “I loved you as a sister—I shared every hope, every enjoyment with you; surely, all recollection of the old time can not have died out of your soul, Katharine?”