Hardly knowing what answer to make, but now interested in the woman as never in one before, he asked: “What name does your uncle call you?” Wishing to find out her name he put it this way, as it is considered the height of rudeness to ask a person her name. When several persons are together, and the name of one is desired by one of the company, the plan is always to ask some third person for the desired information. “Astumastao,” she replied. And then feeling with her keen womanly instincts that the time had come when the long interview should end, she quickly threw her game, which had been dropped on the ground, over her shoulder again, and gliding by him, soon disappeared in the forest trail.
Chapter Six.
Hunting Wild Geese.
To Oowikapun this interview was of great value, and while he could not but feel a certain amount of humiliation at the cowardice he had been forced to admit, and felt also that it was a new experience to be thus talked to by a woman, yet his conscience told him that she was right and he deserved the reproofs she had given. So with something more to think about, he resumed his onward journey, and ere he stopped that night and made his little camp he was many miles nearer his home.
As he sat there by his cheery fire, while all around him stretched the great wild forest, he tried to think over some of the new and strange adventures through which he had passed. With starring vividness they came before him, and above all the brave words of the maiden Astumastao seemed to ring in his ears. Then the consciousness that he who had been trying to make himself and others believe that he was so brave was really so cowardly took hold of him, and so depressed him that he could only sit with bowed head and burdened heart, and say within himself that he was very weak and foolish.
The stars shone out in that brilliant northern sky, and the aurora danced and blazed and scintillated, meteors flashed across the heavens with wondrous brightness, but Oowikapun saw them not. The problem of life here and hereafter had come to him as never before. He found out that he had a soul, and that there was a God to fear and love, who cared for men and women, and that there was reward for right doing and punishment for sin. So with the little light he had, he pondered and thought, and the more he did the worse he got; for he had not yet found the way of simple faith and trust, and he became so saddened and terrified that there was but little sleep that night for him. As there he sat longing for help, he remembered the words of Astumastao: “O, that we had a missionary among us, with the book of heaven, that we might learn more about the way, and be brave and courageous all the time!”
In this frame of mind he watched and waited until the first blush of morn; then after a hasty meal prepared on his camp fire, he started off, and in due time reached his home in the distant village in the wilderness, and in the depressing mood in which we here first met him he lived for many a day.
The change in him was noticed by all, and many conjectured as to the cause, but Oowikapun unburdened not his heart, for he knew there was none among his people who could understand, and with bitter memories of his cowardice, he thought in his blindness that the better way to escape ridicule and even persecution would be to keep all he had learned about the Good Spirit and the book of heaven locked up in his heart.