“You speak your wish, Acashee. Hope shall yet be my wife. Go, and let us meet no more.”
The girl ground her teeth with rage as she saw him ready to leave her, but she resumed, with a soft voice and seductive smile, detaining him gently by the hand.
“Come to our people, John Bonyton; come, and be a great chief, and command a thousand warriors; come, and all the tribes of the east will bow down to the great chief, who has married the wisest and most beautiful woman of the red-men. Come, and Acashee will deck your wigwam; she who is proud as the eagle to the approaches of others, shall coo like the wood-pigeon in the ears of him who has moved the soul of the red maiden, and made her like the timid fawn—she who has been proud as the eagle upon the rock.”
She spoke at first with pride, gradually softening her tones to a tender, caressing beseechingness, which might have been dangerous to one less steadfast than John Bonyton.
“Cease, I beseech thee, Acashee. I have no choice but to love Hope Vines.”
“Listen to what I tell you,” she cried, fiercely. “Hope Vines shall not be your wife while the sea rolls, or the sun shines. She shall be burned for a witch. She shall know what it is to bring the blush of shame and the blight of scorn upon the cheek of Acashee.”
With a wild look of rage and malevolence, she dashed into the forest.
Her language was not lost upon Bonyton, who recalled many words and incidents which confirmed him in the belief that danger impended over Hope Vines, and the threat, “She shall be burned for a witch,” had a fearful significance.
Meanwhile, Acashee pursued her way homeward, half in doubt whether she should forward the plans of the women of the colony, who, she was well aware, designed to denounce Hope as a witch, or whether she should aid her own people in their scheme to abduct her, in their belief that she would prove a great medicine-woman, or priestess.
With these views, many a council had been held to devise the most favorable method of securing her person, while at the same time no indignity, no distress or injury should afflict the sweetness of her soul. While the women of the Pilgrim faith were devising means to degrade and torture this tender child of genius, this nightingale smothered in its own sweets, these children of the woods were intent only to raise her to the highest pitch of reverence and devotion.