utis saw a prisoner with strong body, though it was yet small, and
Wansutis had a new son, a swift hunter, whose face was ruddy by the
firelight, whose presence in her lodge made Wansutis's slumbers quiet.
And this son wanted a maiden for his squaw and went forth to play upon
his pipes before her. But the maiden would not listen and the river and
the maiden killed the brave son of Wansutis, and again her lodge was
lonely."

She ceased for a moment, then as if she were reading the words in the
flames, she sang more slowly:

"I am old, saith old Wansutis, yet I'll live for many harvests. I will
seek another son now; I will bring him to my wigwam. He shall watch me
and protect me; he will cheer me in the winters."

Pocahontas interrupted her:

"That then is the reason thou didst steal my child. Thou shalt not keep
him; he is not for thy lodge. He goeth with his father and with me to be
brought up in the houses of the English."

There came a cry from the forest, the same cry she had heard in her
dreams. Without an instant's doubt, Pocahontas sprang into the blackness
and in a few moments came back with the baby in her arms. She squatted
down by the fire, and felt it over feverishly until she had convinced
herself that it was unharmed.

Wansutis now rose.

"Farewell, Princess," she said. "Wansutis will now be returning to her
lodge."

Now that she had her child safe again, Pocahontas's kind heart began to
speak:

"Wansutis, thou knowest I cannot let thee have my son; but if thou wilt
I will pray my father to give thee the next young brave he captures that
thou mayst no longer be lonely."

"I will seek no more sons," answered the old woman; "perchance he might
set off for a far land and leave me even as thy father's daughter
leaveth him."

"But I will return to him," protested Pocahontas.

"Dost thou know that?" the old woman asked, leaning down and peering
directly into Pocahontas's face. Her gaze was so full of hatred that
Pocahontas drew back in terror.

"I see a ship"--Wansutis began to chant again--"a ship that sails for
many days towards the rising sun; but I never see a ship that sails to
the sunset. I see a deer from the free forests and it is fettered and
its neck is hung with wampum and flowers; but the deer seeks in vain to
escape to its bed of ferns in the woodland. I see a bird that is caught
where the lodges are closer together than the pebbles on the seashore;
but I never see the bird fly free