Here the measure resumed its low and plaintive melody, as she thus concluded her song.
“Who sings the praise of God?
It is ‘Prairie–bird,’ the poor child of the wilderness.
But God spurns not her prayer;
She is a stray–leaf, that knows not the tree
Whence the rude wind hath blown it;
But God planted the parent stem.
And not a branch or leaf thereof is hid from His sight.
The young whip–poor–will flies to its mother’s nest,
The calf bleats to the bison–cow:
No mother’s voice says to Olitipa,’Come here!’
The wide prairie is her home!
God is a Father to Olitipa!
Hallowed be thy name!”
In singing the last few words, the tones of her voice were “most musical, most melancholy;” and though no human eye marked the teardrop that stole down her cheek, it would appear that her song had excited sympathy in some human bosom, for a deep sigh fell upon her ear: startled at the sound, Prairie–bird looked around her tent, but no one could be seen; she listened, but it was not repeated, and the maiden remained unconscious that at the very first touch of her guitar Reginald had crept out of the adjoining lodge, and, enveloped in a buffalo robe on the grass at the back of her tent, had heard from beginning to end her plaintive hymn, and had paid the unconscious tribute of a heavy sigh to the touching pathos of its closing strain.
CHAPTER V.
SYMPTOMS OF A RUPTURE BETWEEN THE DELAWARES AND OSAGES.—MAHÉGA COMES FORWARD IN THE CHARACTER OF A LOVER.—HIS COURTSHIP RECEIVES AN UNEXPECTED INTERRUPTION.
Paul Müller, having left the lodge of Prairie–bird, fulfilled his intention of entering that of Tamenund: he found the venerable chieftain seated upon a buffalo robe; his back leaned against a bale of cloth, a highly ornamented pipe–stem at his lips, while from its other extremity a thin column of smoke, rising in wavy folds, found its way out of the accidental rents and crevices in the skins which covered the lodge. War–Eagle was listening in an attitude of respectful attention to the words which fell from his father; but the subject of conversation was evidently of some importance, as the women and the youths were whispering together at a distance from the two principal persons. The entrance of the missionary was not unnoticed, for Tamenund made him a signal to draw near and sit down; several times the pipe was passed round in silence, when the old chief addressing his guest in the Delaware tongue, said, “The Black Father knows that there are dark clouds in the sky!”
“He does,” replied the missionary. A glance of intelligence passed between War–Eagle and Tamenund, as the latter proceeded.