her breast
when it was put into her hand, and then she peered into it from one side
and the other, unwearied in making acquaintance with her own features.

The other maidens and Claw-of-the-Eagle were given presents also, but
less showy ones. Smith went into his own little house and after hunting
through his sea-chest, brought out a silver bracelet which he slipped on
Pocahontas's arm, saying:

"This is to remind Matoaka always that she is my sister and that I am
her brother."

It seemed to Pocahontas that she was incapable of receiving any further
new impressions. It was as if her mind were a vessel filled to the brim
with water that could not take another drop. Like a squirrel given more
nuts than it can eat at once, who rushes to hide them away, her instinct
made her long to take her treasures off where she could look at them
alone.

"I go back to my father's lodge," she said and did not speak again till
they reached the fort. Then when Smith had seen the little party beyond
the palisades, she called back to him:

"Brother, I shall not forget. This night I will send thee food. I am
well pleased with thy strange town and I will come again."

[Illustration: Decorative]

CHAPTER XII

POWHATAN'S AMBASSADOR

Pocahontas was as good as her word. That same evening as soon as she had
exhibited her treasures to Powhatan and to his envious squaws and had
related her impressions of the town and wigwams of the palefaces, she
busied herself in getting together baskets of corn, haunches of dried
venison and bear-meat and sent them by swift runners to "her brother" at
Jamestown.

In the days following, though she played with her sisters, though she
hunted with Nautauquas in the forest, though she listened at night,
crouched against her father's knees before the fire to tales of
achievements of her tribe in war, or to strange transformation of braves
into beasts and spirits, her thoughts would wander off to the white
man's island, to the many wonders it held which she had scarcely
sampled. The pressure of her bracelet on her arm would recall its giver,
and she saw again in her mind his eyes, so kind when they smiled on her,
so stern at other times.

She thought too of the man she had seen rolled over by the barrel--of
how slowly he had risen. She knew that there was such a thing as
starvation, because sometimes allied tribes of the Powhatans, whose
harvests had not been successful or whose braves had been