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"They are always here. Metacom has no soul but the spirit of his fathers!" "When he was tired of silence, the murdered Miantonimoh spoke aloud," continued Conanchet, after permitting the customary courteous pause to succeed the emphatic words of his companion.
Leaving his wife a little without the circle, Conanchet advanced, and taking the unresisting and half-unconscious Ruth by the arm, he led her forward. He placed the two females in attitudes where each might look the other full in the face. Strong emotion struggled in a countenance which, in spite of its fierce mask of war-paint, could not entirely conceal its workings.
"I said my heart was stone;" coldly returned the Narragansett. "See the girl creepeth like a frightened fowl among the leaves. If my brother Conanchet will look, he will see his beloved." The countenance of Conanchet grew dark, but it did not waver. "We will go among the bushes, if the Sachem is afraid to speak to his woman with the eyes of a Mohican on him.
Conanchet shook his head, and spread the fingers of his two hands in a manner to describe the radii of a circle. "Hugh!" he said, starting even while he was thus significantly answering by gestures, "a moccason comes!" Submission, who had so often and so recently been arrayed against the savages, involuntarily sought the lock of his carbine.
The defence of Conanchet, the young Sachem of the Narragansetts, was every way worthy of his high character for courage and mental resources, nor was the victory gained without serious loss to the Colonists.
Commissioners, named by the Government of the Colony, had come out with the party, clothed with power to dispose of Philip, should that dreaded chief, as was expected, fall into the hands of the English. To these persons the fate of Conanchet was now referred. We shall not detain the narrative to dwell on the particulars of the council.
For the first moment, she stood in a suspended and doubting posture, such as one might suppose a creature of mist would assume ere it vanished, and then meeting the eye of Conanchet, the uplifted foot retouched the earth, and her whole form sunk into the modest and shrinking attitude of an Indian girl, who stood in the presence of a Sachem of her tribe.
At length Conanchet paused He studied the position of the sun, gravely, and took a long and anxious look at the signs of the forest, in order that he might not be deceived in its quarter. To an unpractised eye, the arches of the trees, the leaf-covered path, and the mouldering logs, would have seemed everywhere the same. But it was not easy to deceive one so trained in the woods.
Will Conanchet be like his fathers? when will the young Sachem of the Narragansetts become a man? Why should I tell my brother of these visits? Metacom hath often seen the long line of Wampanoag Chiefs, in his sleep? The brave Sachems sometimes enter into the heart of their son?" The lofty-minded, though wily Philip struck his hand heavily upon his naked breast, as he answered
"Narra-mattah is a wife." "Then will she listen to the words of her husband. Conanchet is a chief no longer. He is a prisoner of the Mohicans. Uncas waits for him in the woods!" Notwithstanding the recent declaration of the young wife, she heard of this calamity with little of the calmness of an Indian woman. At first, it seemed as if her senses refused to comprehend the meaning of the words.
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