"Not afraid," answered Otaitsa; and then she relapsed into silence.
"But why do you weep, my sweet Blossom?" said Edith, after pausing for a moment or two, to give her time to recover her composure.
"Because one of your people has killed one of my people," answered the Indian girl sorrowfully. "Is not that enough to make me weep?"
"Indeed!" exclaimed Edith. "I am much grieved to hear it, Blossom; but when did this happen, and how?"
"It happened only yesterday," replied the girl, "and but a little towards the morning from your own house, my sister. It was a sad day!--it was a sad day!"
"But I trust it was none near and dear to thee, Blossom, or to the Black Eagle," said Edith, putting her arms around her, and trying to soothe her.
"No, no," answered Otaitsa; "he was a bad man, a treacherous man, one whom my father loved not. But that matters little. They will have blood for his blood."
The truth flashed upon Edith's mind at once; for, although less acquainted with the Indian habits than her brother or her father, she knew enough of their revengeful spirit to feel sure that they would seek the death of the murderer with untiring eagerness, and she questioned her sweet companion earnestly as to all the particulars of the sad tale. Otaitsa told her all she knew, which was, indeed, nearly all that could be told. The man called the Snake, she said, had been shot by the white man Woodchuck, in the wood to the north-east of Mr. Prevost's house. Intimation of the fact had spread like fire in dry grass through the whole of the Oneidas, who were flocking to the meeting at Sir William Johnson's castle, and from them would run through the whole tribe.
"Woodchuck has escaped," Otaitsa said, "or would have been slain ere now; but they will have his life yet, my sister,"--and then she added slowly and sorrowfully, "or the life of some other white man, if they cannot catch the one."
Her words presented to Edith's mind a sad and terrible idea--one more fearful in its vagueness and uncertainty of outline than in the darkness of particular points. That out of a narrow and limited population, some one was foredoomed to be slain--that out of a small body of men, all feeling almost as brethren, one was to be marked out for slaughter--that one family was to lose husband, or father, or brother, and no one could tell which--made her feel like one of a herd of wild animals, cooped up within the toils of the hunters.