I, who have power to perform it, have said it; no, not though I should have just occasion offered, for I am now grown old and would gladly end my few remaining days in peace and quiet. Even if the English should offer me injury, I would not resent it. My country is large enough and I would remove myself further from you. I hope this will give satisfaction to my brother, he can not have my daughter. If he is not satisfied, I will move three days' journey from him and never see Englishmen more." His speech was ended. The barbarian's hall of state was silent. The council fire unreplenished had burned low during the interview and the great crackling logs lay reduced to a dull heap of embers--fit symbol of the aged chieftain who had just spoken. As Mason well says, "Call him a savage, but remember that his shining love for his daughter only throws into darker shadow the infamous proposition of the civilized Englishman to tear away the three days' bride from the arms of her Indian lover and give her to a man who had already a wife in England. Call him a barbarian, but forget not that when his enemies hungered he gave them food. When his people were robbed, whipped and imprisoned by the invaders of his country, he had only retaliated and had never failed to buy the peace to which he was entitled without money and without price. Call him a heathen, but do not deny that when he said that, if the English should do him an injury, he would not resent it but only move further from them, he more nearly followed the rule of the Master, of whom he was ignorant, than did the faithless, pilfering adventurers at the fort, who rolled their eyes heavenward and called themselves Christians." No candid person can read the history of this famous Indian with an attentive consideration of the circumstances under which he was placed without forming a high estimate of his character as a warrior, statesman and a patriot. His deficiencies were those of education and not of genius. His faults were those of the people whom he governed and of the period in which he lived. His great talents, on the other hand, were his own and these are acknowledged even by those historians who still regard him with prejudice. Smith calls him "a prince of excellent sense and parts, and a great master of all the savage arts of government and policy." He died in 1618, just one year after the untimely death of Pocahontas, "full of years and satiated with fightings, and the delights of savage life." He is a prominent character in the early history of our country and well does he deserve it. In his prime he was as ambitious as Julius Caesar and not less successful, considering his surroundings. He and Pocahontas were the real "F. F. V.'s," for, beyond controversy, they were of the "First Families of Virginia." CHAPTER III MASSASOIT. THE FRIEND OF THE PURITANS.