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The hands of Narra-mattah trembled, and she clung convulsively to the robe of Ruth. "Mother! mother! " whispered the agitated victim of so many conflicting emotions, "I will pray again an evil Spirit besets me." Ruth felt the force of her grasp, and heard the breathing of a few words of petition; after which the voice was mute, and the hands relaxed their hold.
The attentive woman caught each slow and measured syllable, as one trained in superstitious legends would listen to the words of an oracle. But, accustomed to obedience and bewildered with her grief, she hesitated no longer. The head of Narra-mattah sunk on her bosom, as she left him, and her face was buried in her robe.
At the first low breathing notes of this nursery song, Narra-mattah became as motionless as if her rounded and unfettered form had been wrought in marble. Pleasure lighted her eyes, as strain succeeded strain; and ere the second verse was ended, her look, her attitude, and every muscle of her ingenuous features, were eloquent in the expression of delight.
"Each lonely scene shall thee restore; For thee the tear be duly shed: Beloved till life could charm no more, And mourn'd till pity's self be dead." Collins. An hour later, and the principal actors in the foregoing scene had disappeared. There remained only the widowed Narra-mattah, with Dudley, the divine, and Whittal Ring.
He laid it upon a table; then pointing, in a manner that appeared to challenge attention, he turned, and left the room as abruptly as he had entered. A cry of joy burst from the lips of Narra-mattah, the instant the beaded belts caught her eye.
Encouraged by this unequivocal evidence of success, nature grew still more powerful in its efforts, and the closing verse was sung to an ear that nestled near her heart, as it had often done during the early years of Narra-mattah while listening to its melancholy melody. Content was a quiet but an anxious witness of this touching evidence of a reviving intelligence between his wife and child.
"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.
He knows what she knows; he sees what she sees; his mind is her mind. If the Great Spirit made her skin of a different color, he made her heart the same. Narra-mattah will not listen to the lying language; she shuts her ears, for there is deceit in its sounds. She tries to forget it.
Narra-mattah, or 'the driven snow, laid her hand lightly on the arm of the chief, and she looked wistfully and long into his face, without an answer. The gaze seemed to deprecate the anger that might he awakened by what she was about to reveal.
Narra-mattah, as we shall continue to call her, in air, expression, and attitude, resembled one who had a fancied existence in the delusion of some exciting dream.
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