istened to the
strange sob of the pines, swaying in the chill winds of the autumn
night.

"I am not what I was!" he continued; the world is open now, and I must
be a part of it. The bear and deer speak to me with tongues I do not
understand. _Ma mere! ma mere_! I must know whether I am a Delaware or
pale face!--whether one or the other, I am still yours--yours always!
Speak! speak with a straight tongue to your child!"

"Ough! ough! ough!" groaned the old woman, looking at him wistfully,
and plainly struggling with herself--hesitating between two courses.

"Speak!" said Verty, with a glow in his eye, which made him resemble
a young leopard of the wild--"speak, _ma mere_!--I am no longer a
child! I go into a new land now, and how shall it be? As a red face,
or a long knife--which am I? Speak, _ma mere_--say if I am a Delaware,
whose place is the woods, or a white, whose life must take him from
the deer forever!"

The struggle was ended; Verty could not have uttered words more fatal
to his discovering anything. He raised an insuperable barrier to
any revelations--if, indeed, there existed any mystery--by his
alternative. Was he a Delaware, and thus doomed to live in the forest
with his old Indian mother--or was he a white, in which case, he would
leave her? Pride, cunning, above all, deep and pure affection, sealed
the old woman's lips, if she had thought of opening them. She looked
for sometime at Verty, then, taking his head between her hands, she
said, with eyes full of tears:

"You are my own dear son--my young, beautiful hawk of the woods--who
said you were not a true Delaware!"

And the old woman bent down, and with a look of profound affection,
pressed her lips to Verty's forehead.

The young man's face assumed an expression of mingled gloom and doubt,
and he sighed. Then he was an Indian--a Delaware--the son of the
Indian woman--he was not a paleface. All the talk about it was thrown
away; he was born in the woods--would live and die in the woods!

For a moment the image of Redbud rose before him, and he sighed. He
knew not why, but he wished that he was not an Indian--he wished that
his blood had been that of the whites.

His sad face drooped; then his eyes ware raised, and he saw the old
woman weeping.

The sight removed from Verty's mind all personal considerations, and
he leaned his head upon her knee, and pressed her hand to his lips.

"Did the child make his mother weep," he said; "did his idle