e another month I'll know enough of their jargon to
need no lying interpreter," muttered Standish, and he kept his word.

The Indian breakfast, already nearly ready, proved both toothsome and
plentiful. It consisted of lobsters, clams, and muscles, both cooked and
raw, ears of green maize roasted in the husk, and no-cake, that is to
say, pounded corn mixed with water and baked in the ashes, the germ and
animus of hoe-cake, bannocks, Johnnycake, and all the various forms of
maize-bread so well known throughout our land.

Breakfast over Janno rather timidly inquired if the white chiefs would
permit the visit of an old squaw of his tribe who much desired to see
them.

"Surely if the good woman hath occasion to speak with us," replied
Bradford amiably. "Why doth the chief seem to mistrust our willingness?"

"Squaw no speak to brave in council," explained Squanto with an air of
shocked propriety; but before he could further explain a bowed and
decrepit figure emerged from one of the little huts on the edge of the
woods and slowly approached the white men who stepped forward to meet
her, desiring Squanto to assure her of welcome. Coming so close to the
little group that Standish muttered, "Sure she is minded to salute us,"
the poor old crone peered into the face of one after another of the
white men, then wofully shook her head and began to mutter in her own
tongue with strange gesticulations, but as he heard them Squanto uttered
a shrill cry of terror, and the sachem stepping forward spoke some words
of stern command, before which the old woman humbly bowed and became
silent.

"What is it? Would she curse us? What is her grievance? What is her
story?" demanded Bradford half indignantly, and Squanto, after some
conference with the sachem, informed them that this woman, once called
Sunlight-upon-the-Waters, but now known as The-Night-in-Winter, had
been mother of seven tall sons who filled her wigwam with venison,
and shared their corn and tobacco with her; but three of these sons
were among the captives entrapped and sold to slavery by Hunt, and
the other four had perished in the plague brought down upon the red men
by the curse of The-White-Fool who died about the same time; and thus
The-Night-in-Winter, having just cause, hated the white men as she hated
death and the devil, and wished to curse them as The-White-Fool had
cursed her people, but the sachem would not let her, and now she was
doubly bereft of her children,