"I had my thoughts for company," he said simply. "They are not happy thoughts, brother. They would not let me sleep."
I was shaken by a profound revulsion of feeling. It came over me that I had never fully appreciated the extreme degree of the mental suffering to which he had been exposed.
"Your sorrow is great," I acknowledged, "but sure you know that she for whom you mourn——"
"She is a sick soul," he said. "She has offended the Great Spirit, and he has permitted Ha-ne-go-ate-geh to cast his shadow over her. But some day she will have performed the penance Ha-wen-ne-yu asks of her, and in that day he will permit Ta-wan-ne-ars to reclaim her."
"I hope so," I replied, stunned by the amazing confidence in eternal justice, the Christian charity, of this man who was, properly speaking, a lettered savage.
"Ta-wan-ne-ars knows it," he asserted confidently. "But I can not help thinking of the wickedness of my enemy."
His hand flew to his knife-hilt.
"I am confident of what will come, but I sorrow over what has been and is."
"I wish I had not spared him when his life was in my hand," I cried.
"My brother did not know," answered Ta-wan-ne-ars. "And already then the harm was done, the evil was sowed, the soul was corrupted."