it had a lonely and a boding sound, like a trumpet blown above
the dead. The color died into an ashen gray and the air grew cold,
with a heaviness beside that dragged at the very soul. Diccon shivered
violently, turned restlessly upon the log that served him as settle, and
began to mutter to himself.

"Art cold?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Something walked over my grave," he said. "I would
give all the pohickory that was ever brewed by heathen for a toss of
aqua vitae!"

In the centre of the village rose a great heap of logs and dry branches,
built during the day by the women and children. When the twilight fell
and the owls began to hoot this pile was fired, and lit the place from
end to end. The scattered wigwams, the scaffolding where the fish
were dried, the tall pines and wide-branching mulberries, the trodden
grass,--all flashed into sight as the flame roared up to the top-most
withered bough. The village glowed like a lamp set in the dead blackness
of marsh and forest. Opechancanough came from the forest with a score of
warriors behind him, and stopped beside me. I rose to greet him, as was
decent; for he was an Emperor, albeit a savage and a pagan. "Tell the
English that Opechancanough grows old," he said. "The years that once
were as light upon him as the dew upon the maize are now hailstones
to beat him back to the earth whence he came. His arm is not swift to
strike and strong as it once was. He is old; the warpath and the scalp
dance please him no longer. He would die at peace with all men. Tell
the English this; tell them also that Opechancanough knows that they are
good and just, that they do not treat men whose color is not their own
like babes, fooling them with toys, thrusting them out of their path
when they grow troublesome. The land is wide and the hunting grounds
are many. Let the red men who were here as many moons ago as there are
leaves in summer and the white men who came yesterday dwell side by side
in peace, sharing the maize fields and the weirs and the hunting grounds
together." He waited not for my answer, but passed on, and there was no
sign of age in his stately figure and his slow, firm step. I watched him
with a frown until the darkness of his lodge had swallowed up him and
his warriors, and mistrusted him for a cold and subtle devil.

Suddenly, as we sat staring at the fire we were beset by a band of
maidens, coming out of the woods, painted, with antlers upon their heads
and pi