es. In due time a
son was born to them, the idol of his mother's heart, and the constant
companion of the father, who seemed to find in the child some link with
his own stray wits; but when the boy was about three years old the poor
exile was seized with a fever, and in his delirium escaping from his
tender nurse stalked naked through the village proclaiming in the native
tongue that the wrath of God hung over this people and this land,
because of the cruel wrong they had done to him and to his comrades; and
he foretold that before seven snows had covered his grave, white men
from over the sea should come like the wildfowl in the spring and settle
down upon the creeks and ponds, and fill the forest with their cry, and
the red men should melt away as the snow melts and their place be no
more seen.

It was really worth something to hear Squanto declaim this wild prophecy
with the shrill voice and fevered gestures of the delirious captive; and
as they caught his meaning the pnieses around Janno stirred in their
places, laid hand upon the tomahawk at each man's girdle, and cast
menacing looks upon the strangers.

"Have a care, Squanto! Say no more on that head, or thou 'lt stir up
strife afresh," muttered Bradford in the interpreter's ear, while
Standish fixed his eyes upon Janno ready to sacrifice him at the first
hostile movement. But the young chief casting a meaning glance around
the circle said quietly,--

"The-White-Birch was of the blood of Aspinet my brother, and
The-White-Fool was her husband."

"Well said, Chief!" exclaimed Standish who had already mastered much of
the Indian language, and in accordance with his late resolve soon became
the most expert interpreter in the colony, while Bradford nodding said,
"Go on, Squanto!"

Little however remained to tell. The ill-starred Frenchman died within a
few hours of his prophecy, and hardly had The-White-Birch laid him in
his honored grave when she was called to bury her little boy, whom the
father had named Louis, along with him. Then she set off alone to find
the comrades of her lost love at Namasket, and Shawmut, that they might
with her lament his death; but whether illness came upon her and she
crept aside to die, or haply some wild creature slew and devoured her,
or in her maze of grief she strayed away and starved in the limitless
woods, none ever knew; she never was heard of again.

"And the other two captives?" inquired Standish.

"The Feast-of-Green-C