een lured to their lonely resting-place by the ever-beckoning
seductions of a fertile and virgin land, with a singular exemption,
during the march, from Indian molestation. But clearings made and houses
built, the bright shield was soon to turn its other side. After repeated
persecutions and eventual hostilities, forced on them by a dwindled
tribe in their neighborhood--persecutions resulting in loss of crops and
cattle; hostilities in which they lost two of their number, illy to be
spared, besides others getting painful wounds--the five remaining
cousins made, with some serious concessions, a kind of treaty with
Mocmohoc, the chief--being to this induced by the harryings of the
enemy, leaving them no peace. But they were further prompted, indeed,
first incited, by the suddenly changed ways of Mocmohoc, who, though
hitherto deemed a savage almost perfidious as Caesar Borgia, yet now put
on a seeming the reverse of this, engaging to bury the hatchet, smoke
the pipe, and be friends forever; not friends in the mere sense of
renouncing enmity, but in the sense of kindliness, active and familiar.

"'But what the chief now seemed, did not wholly blind them to what the
chief had been; so that, though in no small degree influenced by his
change of bearing, they still distrusted him enough to covenant with
him, among other articles on their side, that though friendly visits
should be exchanged between the wigwams and the cabins, yet the five
cousins should never, on any account, be expected to enter the chief's
lodge together. The intention was, though they reserved it, that if
ever, under the guise of amity, the chief should mean them mischief, and
effect it, it should be but partially; so that some of the five might
survive, not only for their families' sake, but also for retribution's.
Nevertheless, Mocmohoc did, upon a time, with such fine art and pleasing
carriage win their confidence, that he brought them all together to a
feast of bear's meat, and there, by stratagem, ended them. Years after,
over their calcined bones and those of all their families, the chief,
reproached for his treachery by a proud hunter whom he had made captive,
jeered out, "Treachery? pale face! 'Twas they who broke their covenant
first, in coming all together; they that broke it first, in trusting
Mocmohoc."'

"At this point the judge would pause, and lifting his hand, and rolling
his eyes, exclaim in a solemn enough voice, 'Circling wiles and blood