With anxious heart Narretta hurried from one sufferer to the other, and the first Indian that looked at the door, was urged to go immediately to Deacon Wilder’s and ask some one to come to her. Robert and Marian instantly obeyed the summons, but human skill could not save Owanno. In three days after the commencement of his illness, it was said of him that he had gone to the fair hunting grounds, while the despairing howl of the assembled Indians mingled with the mournful wail of the widowed Narretta and the feeble moans of Orianna, who incessantly cried, “Bury me under the maple tree with Charlie, where we sat when he told me—where he told me——” but what he told her she never said.
At Marian’s request, Mrs. Gorton had remained for some time at Glen’s Creek, and one day, not long after Owanno’s burial, she accompanied her daughter to see Orianna, who, though very weak, was still much better. They found her asleep, but Narretta arose to receive them. As Mrs. Gorton’s eye fell upon her, an undefined remembrance of something past and gone rose before her, and at last, taking the old Indian woman’s hand, she said, “Narretta, have I never met you before?”
“Plenty times,” was the laconic answer; and after a moment’s pause, Mrs. Gorton continued: “I remember now, eighteen or twenty years ago your wigwam was near my home in Virginia, and you one morning came to me, saying you were going away toward the setting sun.”
“White woman remembers wonderful,” said old Narretta.
“I might not remember so well,” answered Mrs. Gorton, “but you loved my little Madeline, and about the time you went away she died.”
Something out of doors attracted Narretta’s attention, and she abruptly turned away. For more than an hour she was gone, and when she returned she was muttering to herself, “Yes, I’ll do it. I shall do it.”
“Do what?” asked Marian, a little alarmed at Narretta’s excited manner.
But Narretta made her no answer, and going up to Mrs. Gorton, said rapidly, “Madeline did not die! Narretta loved her, loved all children, but the Great Spirit gave her no pappooses of her own, and when she went away she stole her. She took her, and under the tree she left part of her clothing and the smashed carcass of a young fawn, to make the white woman think the wolves had eaten her up.”
Here she stopped, and Mrs. Gorton, grasping the wasted hand of Orianna, turned to Narretta and said, “Tell me, tell me truly, if this be Madeline, my long-lost daughter!”
“It is!” answered Narretta. “You know she was never so fair as the other one,” pointing to Marian, “and with a wash of roots which I made, she grew still blacker.”