"You shall hear me. If you want human lives, take mine—take Eva's, but spare his gray hairs; do him a wrong, and as sure as our Heavenly Father reigns above, a punishment shall come to you. Show him mercy, treat us as human beings, and you will thank Him to your dying day that He led you aright, when you went so far astray."
The father would have gone forward and drawn her away, but he was held by her soulful eloquence.
She staggered back and would have fallen, had not Aunt Peggy, who, after all, was the most cool-headed one in the party, seen what was coming and caught her in her arms.
Half-supporting and half-dragging her, she got her back to the tree, where she gently seated her.
Poor Maggie threw her arms around the good woman's neck and gave way to hysterical sobbing, while her aunt tried to soothe her.
Mr. Brainerd sat like a statue, but his lips trembled, and it required all the power of his will to keep from breaking down as utterly as did Maggie herself, who, flinging one of her arms around weeping Eva, gathered her and their aunt in an embrace, and surrendered to her tempest of grief.
The Senecas looked on, but if there was any glimmering of tenderness in their nature it did not struggle to the surface, and the trees around them could not have betrayed less emotion.
As for Jake Golcher, he scanned the picture with darker passions than those of the savages themselves.
He did not stir, but, when he saw Habakkuk McEwen look inquiringly at him, he beckoned him to approach.
The frightened fellow sprang to his feet and hurried across the short space, eager to do anything to win the favor of the other.