“Good heavens!” cried Sir Henry, utterly aghast. “Good heavens! How you have deceived me!” As he spoke his brow grew dark as a thunder-cloud and the mother trembled.
Presently, clasping her infant still closer to her bosom, “O father! father!” she sobbed, “forgive me! forgive me!” And while Helen sobbed and implored, and while the old knight was trying to calm himself sufficiently to go on and vent his indignation in measured terms, the baby, for the first time since he had found it among the lilies, turned away from him and began to cry. This was more than Sir Henry could stand. Its wailing accents pierced deep into his heart. There was a moment’s struggle within him; then, going up to it, he let fall a tear on its bare head, saying: “Harry, Harry, don’t cry. For love of you I will forgive all.”
Berkeley, who had been for the past three days at St. Mary’s, was not long in answering his wife’s summons to speed to the tower, and with him came Father McElroy, who offered to take the whole blame on himself. But all was blue sky now; the baby had triumphed, and as Sir Henry grasped the hand of his son-in-law he said:
“I thank you, ay, from the bottom of my heart I thank you, for christening the child Harry Lee. I hope it is his whole name, no addition?”
“Harry Lee and nothing else,” replied the happy Berkeley; whereupon Sir Henry, in the fulness of his joy, took the child away from Helen, and, kneeling down at Father McElroy’s feet, said, Anglican though he was: “Reverend father, may I ask your blessing on me and my grandson?” Then, when the blessing had been pronounced, he rose up off his knees, and exclaimed with a voice and mien which those who were present never forgot: “O God be thanked! I shall not be the last of the Lees.”
One autumn day in the year 1660 a young pale-face might have been seen entering an Indian village which stood on the western slope of one of the Alleghany mountains and not far from the source of the Monongahela.
He was a tall, handsome youth, with long, chestnut hair resting on his shoulders; yet withal he had a somewhat girlish countenance which sorted ill with the deep scar across his left cheek, that looked very like a sabre-cut. Presently he reined in his steed in front of a big cabin forming the centre of the village, and on top of which was a cross, and said to himself, “This must be the church”; then inquired for Father Evelyn.
A few minutes later the young man entered a wigwam close by, and found himself face to face with his god-father; but neither recognized the other. “Are you truly Harry Lee?” exclaimed the priest, with visible emotion. “Why, Harry, I have not laid eyes on you since you were a child. Is this indeed you?”
We may be sure that Harry was warmly welcomed to the missionary’s humble abode, where for a score of years he had dwelt with his savage flock around him; but no, not savages any longer. Virtue reigned in the midst of this happy tribe, and no prisoner had been put to the torture by them for well-nigh a hundred moons.