It was a sweet girlish voice that seemed to be singing--singing about him, about Benee the wanderer in sylvan wilds; the man who for long years had been alone because he loved being alone, whose hand--until he reached the white man's home--had been against everyone, and against every beast as well.
And the song was a kind of sweet little ballad, which I should try in vain to translate.
But Benee opened his eyes at last, and his astonishment knew no bounds as he saw, kneeling by his mossy couch, the self-same Weenah that he had been thinking and dreaming about.
Though still a girl in years, being but thirteen, she seemed a woman in all her sympathies.
Beautiful? Yes; scarcely changed as to face from the child of six he used to roam in the woods with in the long, long ago. Her dark hair hung to her waist and farther in two broad plaits. Her black eyes brimmed over with joy, and there was a flush of excitement on her sun-kissed cheeks.
"Weenah! Oh, Weenah! Can it be you?" he exclaimed in the Indian tongue.
"It is your own little child-love, your Weenah; and ah! how I have longed for you, and searched for you far and near. See, I am clad in the skins of the puma and the otter; I have killed the jaguar, too, and I have been far north and fought with terrible men. They fell before the poison of my arrows. They tried to catch me; but fleet of foot is Weenah, and they never can see me when I fly. In trees I have slept, on the open heather, in caves of rocks, and in jungle. But never, never could I find my Benee. Ah! life of mine, you will never go and leave us again.
"Yes," she added, "Mother and Father live, and are well. Our home have we enlarged. 'Tis big now, and there is room in it for Benee.
"Come; come--shall we go? But what strange, strange war-weapons you carry. Ah! they are the fire-spears of the white man."
"Yes, Weenah mine! and deadly are they as the lightning's bolt that flashes downward from the storm-sky and lays dead the llama and the ox.