"What would it avail you, were he found?" asked the squaw.
"Why?"
"The Red warriors would immediately take his scalp, for the oracles of the pawaws have driven them mad. After three days of conjuration, they have told us—"
"They—are the pawaws a tribe of the Iroquois?"
"They are our wise men—our oracles."
"And they told—what?"
"That the devils would not hinder the pale faces from being masters of our country. We have fought bravely; but the brandy, the gold and silver of the Yengees are more powerful than the prophesies of the lying pawaws or the knives of our warriors."
"Every Red man in the land has dug up the war-hatchet," said a strange guttural voice; "the print of the white moccassins will soon be effaced on the prairies and in the woods—their graves alone will remain—their scalps and their bones."
The old squaw started nimbly forward, and poor Mary pressed her little naked babe closer to her breast, on seeing the towering form of Ossong, streaked with his ghastly war paint, appear between her and the door of the wretched wigwam in which she lay so helplessly at his mercy.
"What seek you in the dwelling of Orono?" demanded the Indian woman with some asperity.