that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you and persecute you.'"

By this time Hetty had become excited; her eye gleamed with the
earnestness of her feelings, her cheeks flushed, and her voice, usually
so low and modulated, became stronger and more impressive. With the
Bible she had been early made familiar by her mother, and she now turned
from passage to passage with surprising rapidity, taking care to cull
such verses as taught the sublime lessons of Christian charity and
Christian forgiveness. To translate half she said, in her pious
earnestness, Wah-ta-Wah would have found impracticable, had she made the
effort, but wonder held her tongue tied, equally with the chiefs, and
the young, simple-minded enthusiast had fairly become exhausted with
her own efforts, before the other opened her mouth, again, to utter a
syllable. Then, indeed, the Delaware girl gave a brief translation of
the substance of what had been both read and said, confining herself to
one or two of the more striking of the verses, those that had struck her
own imagination as the most paradoxical, and which certainly would have
been the most applicable to the case, could the uninstructed minds of
the listeners embrace the great moral truths they conveyed.

It will be scarcely necessary to tell the reader the effect that
such novel duties would be likely to produce among a group of Indian
warriors, with whom it was a species of religious principle never to
forget a benefit, or to forgive an injury. Fortunately, the previous
explanations of Hist had prepared the minds of the Hurons for something
extravagant, and most of that which to them seemed inconsistent and
paradoxical, was accounted for by the fact that the speaker possessed
a mind that was constituted differently from those of most of the
human race. Still there were one or two old men who had heard similar
doctrines from the missionaries, and these felt a desire to occupy an
idle moment by pursuing a subject that they found so curious.

"This is the Good Book of the pale-faces," observed one of these
chiefs, taking the volume from the unresisting hands of Hetty, who gazed
anxiously at his face while he turned the leaves, as if she expected to
witness some visible results from the circumstance. "This is the law by
which my white brethren professes to live?"

Hist, to whom this question was addressed, if it might be considered as
addressed to any