since she might not even avenge them.

"'T is a piteous tale," said Bradford gently when Squanto had finished.
"And we cannot be amazed that this poor heathen mother should thus feel.
There is warrant for it among the classics, Surgeon; Medea and others
were moved in the same fashion. But Squanto, explain to her that we and
all honest white men abhor the course of Master Hunt, and had we found
him at such commerce we would have delivered her sons, and thee too,
Squanto, out of his hands. Tell her our mind is to deal honestly and
Christianly by all men, and here, give her this fair chain, and this
length of red cloth. Tell her that she would do ill to curse us, for we
are friends to her and her people."

"And ask who was The-White-Fool, and what his story," demanded Standish
as Squanto finished rendering the governor's message.

"Squanto know that in himself. Every Pokanoket know that," replied
Squanto, while Janno muttered gloomily in his own tongue,--

"All red men know The-White-Fool's curse. All feel it." So Squanto in
his broken yet picturesque phrases told how "many snows ago" a large
French ship was wrecked farther down the Cape and nearly everything
aboard was lost. Several of her crew, however, came safely ashore and
made a sort of camp with some earthwork defenses on the mouth of the
Pamet River.

"Why men, we saw it, and mused upon the marks of European skill and
training," exclaimed Standish.

"Ay, and the house hard by, and the marvelous grave with the fair-haired
man and infant so curiously embalmed," added Fuller.

"Truly, this is passing strange!" murmured Bradford. "But get on with
thy story, Tisquantum."

The Frenchmen were quiet and peaceable enough, Tisquantum could not but
allow, and yet his people would not permit them to dwell unmolested,
perhaps from some vague fear of ancient prophecy that a pale-faced race
should come from the rising sun and drive the red men into the western
seas; perhaps from some race-hatred lying below the savage's power of
expression; at any rate, as Tisquantum finally declared with a
significant gesture,--

"Sagamore, powahs, pnieses, braves, all men say, It is not good for pale
men with hair like the sunrise to live among the red men whose hair is
like the night. Let them be gone!"

"And what did the red men do about it, Squanto?" asked Standish sternly,
while in his eyes kindled the danger light before which Squanto quailed,
yet sullenly replied,--

"Red m