He pointed to the little captive, who just then looked around, with a bewildered air, sat up and rubbed her eyes.
"Where is papa? where is mamma?" she asked, looking from one to the other, and at a loss to comprehend her situation and her surroundings.
"Take the captive," said The Panther. "No harm shall come to her and my brother until after they meet their friends."
It was fair notice that the remarkable truce ended at the moment of the arrival of the missionary and the child among their people.
Again Finley displayed his tact by asking no questions of Wa-on-mon. Nor did he essay to thank him for his unexpected clemency. He did not so much as speak to or look at him.
"Come, my child," he said tenderly, extending his hand to Mabel, "I am going to take you to papa and mamma."
"Oh, I am so glad!" exclaimed the happy one, slipping her hand into the palm of the missionary.
The warriors standing around and seeing all this must have had their share, too, of strange emotions, for the experience was without a parallel with them.
Had the chieftain been any one except The Panther, something in the nature of a revolt would have been probable; but no one dared gainsay that fearful leader, who, like Philip, chief of the Wampanoags, had mortally smitten the warrior that dared to suggest an opposite policy to that already determined by the sachem.