and
famished dog. Deep thought was in the eye of the one, and absorbing
grief in that of the other. Now the hunter cast his eyes into the
depths of the river in anxious search for the signs of the approach of
the finny people; now he laid his ear to the earth after the manner of
his race, when they would detect the sound of footsteps.

"Didst thou see aught in the current, which thine eye is searching?"
asked the wife tremulously, fixing her bright black eye, moistened
with a tear, upon her hungry infant.

"I saw nothing in the current," answered the hunter. "The net of the
stranger hath swept from the flood that which was in part the food of
our tribes, when he first became acquainted with these shores. The
barbed spear no more brings up the sleeping conger; the Indian throws
his hook into the once populous stream, but it returns with the bait
untouched."

"Did thy quick ear catch the sound of aught in the mazes of the wood?"
asked the fond mother, and her tears fell thick on the cheeks of her
little babe.

"My ear caught no sound in the mazes of the wood," answered the
hunter. "How should it? The stranger hath left nothing save the mouse,
and the mole, and few of them. He has swept away the beloved retreats
of the bounding beauty of the forest, the nimble deer, and none are
left in the glades, where once they were thicker than the stars. The
bear, and the wolf, and the panther, love not their crafty brother,
and have gone yet deeper into the forest. The wild duck feeds now in
the deep waters only, the mother teaches her brood that death lurks
behind the wood-skirted shore."

"Then must this little child--thine and mine--our first-born, die of
hunger. Yet bethink thee. I see among yonder lofty trees a cabin, the
whiteness of which tells us that one of the despoilers of our joys
hath there taken up his abode."

"Wouldst thou have the son of Alknomook--the son of the rightful
lord--himself the rightful lord of these wide regions--beg bread from
the stranger?"

"Not to save thy life or mine would I ask it, but what would I not do
to save the life of this beautiful babe, which the Great Spirit
granted to my prayers, when for sixty moons I had lived in thy cabin a
disgraced woman(3)."

"Not therefore should the soul of an Indian warrior bend to a master.
I cannot beg."

"What was the dream which thou hadst in the last Worm-Moon?"

"Thou sayest well--it was of vengeance had by means of the boy. The
son of Alk