"The man is a brave;" returned the Sachem, proudly: "he took the scalp of a Sagamore!"
Again Narra-mattah was silent. She brooded, in nearly stupid amazement, on the frightful truth.
"The Great Spirit sees that the man and his wife are of different tribes," she at length ventured to rejoin. "He wishes them to become the same people. Let Conanchet quit the woods, and go into the clearings with the mother of his boy. Her white father will be glad, and Mohican Uncas will not dare to follow."
"Woman, I am a Sachem and a warrior among my people!"
There was a severe and cold displeasure in the voice of Conanchet, that his companion had never before heard. He spoke in the manner of a chief to his woman, rather than with that manly softness with which he had been accustomed to address the scion of the Pale-faces. The words came over her heart like a withering chill, and affliction kept her mute. The chief himself sate a moment longer in a stern calmness, and then rising in displeasure, he pointed to the sun, and beckoned to his companions to proceed. In a time that appeared to the throbbing heart of her who followed his swift footsteps, but a moment, they had turned a little eminence, and, in another minute, they stood in the presence of a party that evidently awaited their coming. This grave group consisted only of Uncas, two of his fiercest-looking and most athletic warriors, the divine, and Eben Dudley.
Advancing rapidly to the spot where his enemy stood, Conanchet took his post at the foot of the fatal tree. Pointing to the shadow, which had not yet turned towards the east, he folded his arms on his naked bosom, and assumed an air of haughty unconcern. These movements were made in the midst of a profound stillness.
Disappointment, unwilling admiration, and distrust, all struggled through the mask of practised composure, in the dark countenance of Uncas. He regarded his long-hated and terrible foe, with an eye that seemed willing to detect some lurking signs of weakness. It would not have been easy to say whether he most felt respect, or regret, at the faith of the Narragansett. Accompanied by his two grim warriors, the chief examined the position of the shadow with critical minuteness, and when there no longer existed a pretext for affecting to doubt the punctuality of their captive, a deep ejaculation of assent issued from the chest of each. Like some wary judge, whose justice is fettered by legal precedents, as if satisfied there was no flaw in the proceedings, the Mohegan then signed to the white men to draw near.
"Man of a wild and unreclaimed nature!" commenced Meek Wolfe, in his usual admonitory and ascetic tones, "the hour of thy existence draws to its end! Judgment hath had rule; thou hast been weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. But Christian charity is never weary. We may not resist the ordinances of Providence, but we may temper the blow to the offender. That thou art here to die, is a mandate decreed in equity, and rendered awful by mystery; but further, submission to the will of Heaven doth not exact. Heathen, thou hast a soul, and it is about to leave its earthly tenement for the unknown world----"
Until now, the captive had listened with the courtesy of a savage when unexcited. He had even gazed at the quiet enthusiasm, and singularly contradictory passions, that shone in the deep lines of the speaker's face, with some such reverence as he might have manifested at an exhibition of one of the pretended revelations of a prophet of his tribe. But when the divine came to touch upon his condition after death, his mind received a clear, and to him an unerring, clue to the truth. Laying a finger suddenly on the shoulder of Meek, he interrupted him, by saying--
"My father forgets that the skin of his son is red. The path to the happy hunting-grounds of just Indians lies before him."