Thus reflecting, he walked on towards the house tenanted by his captive.
On arriving at the place he found she was not there; but some children playing near told him she had gone into the woods, and pointed in the direction she had taken.
The young chief hesitated about following her. He was unwilling to thrust himself into her presence at a time she had, perhaps, devoted to self communion and repose.
Turning in another direction, he wandered for some time purposelessly, taking no note of the locality, until he had reached the belt of the woods which Alice had herself traversed on her road to the old ruin. Wacora, however, entered it at some distance farther off from the skirts of the town.
Once under the shadow of the trees he abated his pace, which, up to this time, had been rapid. Now walking with slow step, and abstracted air, he finally stopped and leant against a huge live oak, his eyes wandering afar over the sylvan scene.
“Here,” he soliloquised in thought, “here, away from men and their doings, alone is there peace! How my heart sickens at the thought that human ambitions and human vanities should so pervert man’s highest mission—peace—turning the world into scenes of strife and bloodshed! I, an Indian savage, as white men call me, would gladly lay down this day and for ever the rifle and the knife; would willingly bury the war hatchet, and abandon this sanguinary contest!
“Could I do so with honour?” he asked, after a pause of reflection. “No! To the end I must now proceed. I see the end with a prophetic eye; but I must go on as I’ve begun, even if my tribe with all our people should be swept from the earth! Fool that I’ve been to covet the leadership of a forlorn hope!”
At the end of this soliloquy he stamped the ground with fury.
Petty dissensions had arisen among the people he deemed worthy of the highest form of liberty. By this his temper had been chafed—his hopes suddenly discouraged. He was but partaking of the enthusiast’s fate, finding the real so unlike the ideal. It is the penalty usually paid by intelligence when it seeks to reform or better the condition of fallen humanity.
“And she,” he continued, in his heart’s bitterness, “she can only think of me as a vain savage; vain of the slight superiority education appears to give me over others of my race. I might as well aspire to make my home among the stars as in her bosom. She is just as distant, or as unlikely to be mine.”