. As the strongest and bravest
remaining in the tribe, Wequoash became heir to his honors by election.

A year later he sat moodily by the lakeside, when a flame burst up from
the water, and a canoe floated toward him that a mysterious agency
impelled him to enter. The boat sped toward the flame, that, at his
approach, assumed Iano's form. He heard the water gurgle as he passed
over the spot where the shape had glimmered, but there was no other sound
or check. Next year this thing occurred again, and then the spirit spoke:
"Only once more."

Yet a third time his fate took him to the spot, and as the hour came on
he called his people to him: "This," said he, "is my death-day. I have
done evil, and the time comes none too soon. Sassacus was your chief. I
envied him his happiness, and gave him poison when I nursed him. Worse
than that, I saw Iano in her canoe on her wedding-day. She had refused my
hand. I entered my canoe and chased her over the water, in pretended
sport, but in the middle of the lake I upset her birch and she was
drowned. See! she comes!"

For, as he spoke, the light danced up again, and the boat came,
self-impelled, to the strand. Wequoash entered it, and with head bent
down was hurried away. Those on the shore saw the flame condense to a
woman's shape, and a voice issued from it: "It is my hour!" A blinding
bolt of lightning fell, and at the appalling roar of thunder all hid
their faces. When they looked up, boat and flame had vanished. Whenever,
afterward, an Indian rowed across the place where the murderer had sunk,
he dropped a stone, and the monument that grew in that way can be seen on
the pond floor to this day.

BERKSHIRE TORIES

The tories of Berkshire, Massachusetts, were men who had been endeared to
the king by holding office under warrant from that sacred personage. They
have been gently dealt with by historians, but that is "overstrained
magnanimity which concentrates its charities and praises for defeated
champions of the wrong, and reserves its censures for triumphant
defenders of the right." While the following incidents have been so well
avouched that they deserve to stand as history, their picturesqueness
justifies renewed acquaintance.

Among the loyalists was Gideon Smith, of Stockbridge, who had helped
British prisoners to escape, and had otherwise made himself so obnoxious
that he was forced for a time to withdraw and pass a season of penitence
and meditation in a caver