He is next discovered, with a slow and heavy step, approaching his wigwam, where his rescued wife waits to receive him. He has seen that the too unequal struggle of his countrymen is hopeless, and he appears sad and gloomy. Telling Nahmeokee, who looks broken with grief, that he is weary with the strife of blood, he says, "Bring me thy little one, that I may press him to my burning heart to quiet its tumult." Without his knowledge, the child had been killed by the white men a few hours previous. The mother goes where the child is lying upon the ground, lifts the skin that covers him, points at him, and drops her head in tears. Metamora looks at the child, at the mother, stoops, and, with rapid motions, feels the little face, arms, and legs. Suppressing the start of horror and the cry of grief a white man would have given, he sinks his chin slowly upon his breast and heaves a deep sigh, and then utters the simple words, "Dead! cold!" in a tone low as if to be heard by himself alone, and sounding like the wail of a sorrow in some far-away world. Having lifted the dead child and fondled it in his bosom and laid it tenderly back, he walks slowly to the weeping Nahmeokee, places his hand on her shoulder, and says, in a soft voice quivering with the tears not suffered to mount in the eyes, "Well, is he not happy? Better that he should die by the stranger's hand than live to be his slave. Do not bow down thy head. Thou wilt see him again in the happy land of the spirits; and he will look smilingly as--as--as I do now." Here the quality of smilingness was in the tones of the voice only, while his face wore the impress of intense grief. The voice and face thus contradicting each other presented a pathos so overwhelming that it seemed as if nothing human could surpass it or resist it.