"Ough!" groaned the old woman, rocking to and fro; "she is black! She has made you bad!"
"No, no! she is white—she is good. She told me about the Great
Spirit, and makes me pure."
"Ough! ough!"
"She is as pure as the bow in the cloud," continued Verty; "and I did not mean that the dove was the bird who whispered, that I was no Delaware. No—my own heart says, 'know—find out.'"
"And why should the heart say 'know?'" said the old woman, still rocking about, and looking at Verty with anxious affection. "Why should my son seek to find?"
"Because the winds are changed and sing new songs; the leaves whisper, as I pass, with a new voice; and even the clouds are not what they were to me when I ran after the shadows floating along the hills, and across the hollows. I have changed, ma mere, and the streams talk no more with the same tongue. I hear the flags and water-lilies muttering as I pass, and the world opens on me with a new, strange light. They talked to me once; now they laugh at me as I pass. Hear the trees, yonder! Don't you hear them? They are saying, 'The Delaware paleface! look at him! look at him!'"
And crouching, with dreamy eyes, Verty for a moment listened to the strange sob of the pines, swaying in the chill winds of the autumn night.
"I am not what I was!" he continued; the world is open now, and I must be a part of it. The bear and deer speak to me with tongues I do not understand. Ma mere! ma mere! I must know whether I am a Delaware or pale face!—whether one or the other, I am still yours—yours always! Speak! speak with a straight tongue to your child!"
"Ough! ough! ough!" groaned the old woman, looking at him wistfully, and plainly struggling with herself—hesitating between two courses.
"Speak!" said Verty, with a glow in his eye, which made him resemble a young leopard of the wild—"speak, ma mere!—I am no longer a child! I go into a new land now, and how shall it be? As a red face, or a long knife—which am I? Speak, ma mere—say if I am a Delaware, whose place is the woods, or a white, whose life must take him from the deer forever!"