The Indian came closer to her, withdrew the hands from her face very gently, and held them with a tender clasp. "Mahaska!" Abigail looked at him steadily, till the tears rose to her wild eyes; then, as his hand grasped hers faster and tighter, she made an effort to wrench herself away. His hands dropped, his face bent downward. "Mahaska!" "I listen." "Surely as the Great Spirit looks down upon us through his stars, the woman who sleeps beneath these dark leaves commands you to listen when I speak, and believe what I shall say!" "But you are an enemy--a savage from the woods; what could you know of my mother?" "Every thing; it is she who charges you to believe this." "But if she had a knowledge of you or your people, why did my uncle never mention it?" "Why did he never mention it?" rejoined the Indian--and now the tenderness left his eyes, and the words came hissing through his shut teeth--"because he was the enemy of your race. Father and mother alike, suffered at his hands." "What, my uncle, my good, pious uncle, the father of Elizabeth! I do not believe it!" cried Abigail indignantly, "he was never the enemy of any human being." "Silence!" whispered the savage, "your words trouble the ashes in that grave!" That instant a gust of wind came sobbing through the pine leaves, and the dusky creepers on the two graves shivered audibly. Abigail drew close to the savage, and laid her hand on his arm. They bent their heads, and listened till the wind swept by. "Is it my mother's voice?" whispered the young girl. "Have you never heard it before, sobbing and wailing among the trees, or whispering softly when the leaves talk to the night?" "Yes! oh, yes!" "Have you never felt it in the night, or here at mid-day in the forest--felt it all around you, till the heart quaked in your bosom, and your limbs refused to move?" "Ah, me! this also--this also!" "And yet you ask, is it the voice of my mother?" "Alas, how should I know? I who never, till this moment, dreamed that she who rests there had wrongs to complain of." "_Rests_ there--_rests_! why, girl, it is because she cannot rest that the wind brings her sobs to your ear--cannot rest while her youngest-born finds shelter with the most cruel of her enemies." "The most cruel of her enemies!" "He who sat in judgment upon a weak, helpless woman, when she came out from the wilderness with her baby sister strapped to her back, beseeching shelter among the people of her mother's race--the very people who had driven that mother forth to die among her enemies, because she was of a different faith, and believed in a God more merciful than the one they worshipped--this man was Samuel Parris." "And the woman, who was she?" cried Abigail, wringing her hands; for so many painful thoughts rushing together almost drove her mad.