"Is Quadaquina ashamed, when he speaks to a warrior, to look him in the eyes, and did he learn his manners from the pale faces?"
The boy turned round, and gazed full at the other, and his eyes glistened, yet it was in a low, soft tone he replied:
"Quadaquina is a child, and knows not the customs of warriors, and children turn away their eyes from what they do not wish to see."
Ohquamehud's face darkened as he said:
"The arts of the Longbeard have blown a cloud between me and my kindred, so that they cannot see me, and it is time my feet were turned towards the setting sun."
"It is the fire-water that puts out the eyes of Ohquamehud, and makes him forget what he owes to the wife of Huttamoiden," exclaimed the boy, with suppressed passion.
"Peace, Quadaquina," said his mother. "Ohquamehud is not now the slave of the fire-water. Go," she added, detecting, with a mother's sagacity, the tumult in the mind of the high-spirited boy, "and return not until thou hast tamed thine anger. Wolves dwell not in the cabin of Peéna."
The boy, with downcast eyes, and obedient to his mother, left the hut.
In explanation of this scene we may say, that, unhappily, like most Indians, Ohquamehud was addicted to the use of spirituous liquors, his indulgence in the fiery gratification being limited only by his inability at all times to obtain it. Although unable to indulge his appetite in the cabin of Esther, he occasionally procured strong liquors in the huts of the other Indians, with whom the practice of taking stimulants was almost universal, and sometimes in such quantities as utterly to lose his reason. Returned on one of these occasions, he demanded rum from Esther, and, upon her refusal to give it, struck her a blow. This so exasperated the boy, Quadaquina, who was present, that, with a club, he prostrated the drunken man, which, indeed, in the condition he was in, was not difficult, and would, had he not been restrained by Peéna, have inflicted a serious injury, if not killed him. Ohquamehud never knew that he had been struck, but ascribed the violent pain in his head the next day to the fire-water, and the contusion to a fall. Peéna, while lamenting the excesses of her relative, felt little or no resentment towards him; but not so with the boy. He despised Ohquamehud for the miserable exhibitions of imbecility he made in his cups, and hated him for the violence to his mother.
"Look," said Peéna, pointing to the articles, and desirous to remove the rising discontent from the mind of the Indian, "the heart of the young Longbeard (for she had no other name for Pownal in her language) is large. All these he took out of it for Peéna."