He believed he never
could love the Shawnees--they who had first caused his father to be
broken of his chiefdom, and then had murdered his mother. He had sworn
eternal hatred against them, and in the interior of his lodge hung such
an incredible number of their scalps that we decline to name
it--knowing that we should be suspected of trifling with the credulity
of our readers. He had never taken the scalp of a white man, and would
promise never to harm any being except the Shawnees; but, toward them
his feelings must be those of the deadliest enmity.
The sublime truths of the great Book of books, its glorious promises,
and its awful mysteries, thrilled the soul of the Huron to its center,
and many a time when wandering alone through the great, solemn forests,
he felt his spirit expanding within him, until his eyes overflowed, and
he, the mighty, scarred warrior, wept like a child. The sweet
instruction, too, of the gentle Fluellina had not been lost entirely
upon him. It was owing to these that for a year he had not taken the
scalp of a Shawnee, though he had been sorely tempted and had slain
more than one. He could not yet bring himself to the point of letting
them go free altogether.
With this somewhat lengthy parenthesis, we will now return to the
present visit of the Huron to his island home.
Oonomoo was about to pass into the interior of the lodge, when a light
exclamation caught his ear.
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