Cornplanter heard with a stern, impassive face. "My father's words are good and just," he said. "Let Ma-za-ri-ta decide," and hope knocked again faintly at the gate that his little sister would not know the white woman who had come to rob him of his heart's blood. The girl was led from her lodge, unknowing the test, and ran gayly to her Indian brother's side, and looked curiously at the little white group in the centre of the watchful throng of red men. Her eyes glanced smilingly at her Indian friends, till they were fastened as if by a magnet on the white woman's face, and there they hung, fascinated, open-mouthed, spellbound, as though they could never drink their fill. The woman stood, arms half extended, burning eyes unquenched by their own tears, lips dumbly moving. Fear, wonder, longing, doubt, swept over the girl's face, till all thought was swallowed up in a light unspeakable, and her tongue babbled "ma-ma." She tottered, but Mrs. Lytte leaped at her and locked her fast with convulsive cries and sobs.
The chief's rigid face was that of a bronze man. All listened for his lips to speak. But it seemed as if the jaws were locked. And when the voice came his followers scarcely knew its hollow accents:
"The Great Spirit has spoken, and who are his red children that they should refuse to listen." Then he covered his face with a corner of his deer-skin robe and passed swiftly from their midst, this Indian Agamemnon, who would not reveal his own agony of spirit.
Eleanor Lytte never saw her Indian brother again, but costly presents each year proved his indelible memory till his death.
[THE REMARKABLE ADVENTURES OF SANDBOYS.]
A BIG HAUL.
BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
There was great excitement at the hotel. The oldest guest—that is to say, the one who had passed the greatest number of summers at the Mountain House—had just come in from his morning's fishing, and had brought with him the largest trout that, so far as any one knew, had ever been caught in the lake. It was a perfect beauty. Its body was long and graceful in its lines and curves, and its "speckles" were of such a lovely hue and quality that a little girl who was looking at them remarked that she "wouldn't mind gettin' her nose all over freckles if they was only pretty and pink like that instead of rusty-lookin' little yeller spots." And everybody in the hotel, even the fishers who had fished for days and days without catching anything, or getting even any bites save those of the black-flies, were glad that the luck had come to the oldest guest, for he was a great favorite with everybody; grandfathers as well as boys had a great affection for him, he was such a fine fellow, and so pleasant and courteous to every one. Probably no one else in the hotel could have caught the "record" trout without making somebody jealous of him, but in this case it was different, the oldest guest had such a habit of seeming to share his good-fortune with all with whom he came in contact. So it happened that there was great rejoicing over the morning's catch, and everybody said it was a wonderful one—even Sandboys acknowledged that it was a catch to be proud of.
"Never been beat as an individual catch," he said. "Never. Biggest trout I ever see; but not the biggest haul—not quite. No, not by a long shot, by hookey!"