Within, the long table fairly groaned with abundance of good cheer; for the housewives had vied with one another to provide the fattest game and the daintiest dishes that Dutch or English housewifery had taught them.
After asking a blessing, they all sat down, the stalwart colonists and their fair-haired women side by side with the taciturn Indians. The white men felt that the best way to thank God for the harvest was to share it with their dark-skinned brethren, who had first taught them to plant and raise the maize which now furnished the table.
Governor Bradford sat at the head of the table. He hoped much from this feast; first, that it might cement the friendship between the colonists and their Indian neighbors, the Wampanoags; and, second, that the news of it might induce the neighboring tribes, which were still partly hostile, to live in peace with the settlers. But though food and talk passed blithely round among the other guests, the governor saw, with growing dismay, that the great Massasoit sat frowning and depressed. The governor was not long in learning the cause. The interpreter, observing the governor's uneasiness, whispered in his ear that in a recent war with the Narragansetts, Massasoit's only child, a boy, was missed and was thought to have been taken prisoner, and of course put to death, after the cruel savage custom.
Toward the end of the feast, drink was served to every guest. For the first time Massasoit showed animation. He seized his cup, and lifted it in the air, and cried aloud in his native tongue, as he sprang to his feet:
"May plague and famine seize the Narragansetts!"
At that very moment the house-door opened, and a pretty group appeared upon the threshold. Two English children stood there, as fair and rosy as the May-time, and between them a dark, lithe little Indian with sparkling eyes.
Prudence ran straight to her mother.
Massasoit paused and trembled; then, as his cup fell and shivered upon the ground, he crossed the room in one stride, and caught the Indian boy in his arms, looking at him as if he could never see enough.
Governor Bradford knew in an instant that the lost child had been restored, even without the Indian warrior's shout of triumph, and Massasoit's passionate exclamation: "Light of my eyes—staff of my footsteps!—thou art come back to me—the warmth of my heart, the sunlight of my wigwam!"
