The tavern-keeper got up, approached the bed, and opening the curtains, spoke to his wife, who had listened, with curiosity rather than anxiety, to what passed. A few sentences were exchanged between them, and the lady made her appearance, a burly, broad-shouldered dame, with an expression upon her somewhat coarse features, indicative of her not being very easily disconcerted or alarmed. An upper petticoat of linsey-woolsey, adapted both to daily and nightly wear, made her voluminous figure look even larger and more imposing than it really was, as with a firm step and almost angry mien she stepped forward by her husband's side. But the menacing stillness of her visitors, and their bloody heads and blankets, now fully revealed by the blaze of the fire, seemed of such evil omen, that the good woman was evidently startled. Her step, at first quick and confident, began to falter, and with an involuntary shudder she approached her husband, who had resumed his seat. A minute passed in gloomy silence. Then the Indian again raised his head, but without looking up, and spoke in a harsh, severe tone.
"Listen, woman," said he, "to the words of a great warrior, whose hand is open, and who will fill his brother's wigwam with many deer skins. In return he asks but little of his sister, and that little she may easily give. Has my sister," continued he, raising his voice and glancing at the woman, "milk for a little daughter?"
The backwoodsman's wife stared at her interlocutor in great astonishment.
"Will she," continued the redskin, "give a share of her milk to a little daughter, who must else die of hunger?"
The countenance of the woman brightened as she discerned that the Indian wanted something of her, and that it was in her power to grant or refuse a favour. She took a step towards him, and impatiently awaited further explanation of his singular demand. The Indian, without deigning to look at her, opened the ample folds of his blanket, and drew forth a lovely infant, wrapped in a pelisse of costly furs. For a few seconds the woman stood in mute surprise; but curiosity to obtain a nearer view of the beautiful child, and perhaps also a feeling of compassion and motherly tenderness, speedily restored to her the use of her tongue.
"Good God!" cried she, stretching out her hands to take the infant; "what a sweet little darling; and come of good parents too, I'll be sworn. Only look at the fur, and the fine lace! Did you ever see such a thing! Where did you get the child? Poor little thing! Feed it? To be sure I will. This is no red-man's child."
The worthy lady seemed disposed to run on in this way for some time longer, had not a significant sign from her husband stopped her mouth. The chief, without vouchsafing her the smallest attention, unfastened the pelisse of grey fox skin, stripped it off, and then proceeded to divest the infant of the first of the coats in which it was enveloped, like a silkworm in its cocoon. But when, after having with some difficulty accomplished this, a third, fourth, and fifth wrapper appeared, he seemed suddenly to lose patience, and drawing his knife, he, with one cut, ripped the whole of the child's clothes from its body, and handed it over stark naked to the tavern-keeper's wife.
"Incarnate fiend!" screamed the shuddering woman, as she snatched the infant from his hands.
"Stop!" cried the Indian, his cold and imperturbable gaze fixed upon the infant's neck, from which a small medal was suspended by a gold chain. Without uttering a word, the woman stripped the chain over the child's head, threw it into the face of the savage, and hurried to her bed.
"The devil's in the woman!" muttered her husband, apparently not a little uneasy at her violence.