My love had raised her head from my breast to gaze at him as he spoke thus; around us had gathered the gentlemen of Pomfret who had been taken prisoners; near us, looking on with strange and curious looks, were those who but recently had been her bond-servants. 'Twas a strange scene and one that would well have become a painter's brush had any been there to limn it. The noble form of the huge chief prostrate before the golden-haired girl who clung to her lover--himself a sorry sight in his soiled and stained finery, which he had worn from the evening that had begun so happily and ended so horribly in her house; the dead body of the other chief lying there close by her feet; the forms of Indian men and women all around, some clad in gorgeous bravery and some nearly naked; also the other white men of different degree--all looking on. Nor would the background have been unworthy of so strange a set of characters. The green glade dotted with its tents and wigwams, set off in contrast the blood-smeared arena where the dead man lay; behind began the ascent of the mountain range, clad with the verdure of the white magnolia, the tulip tree and laurel, with, peeping through, the darker green of the bay tree. Glinting through their branches and many-hued leaves were seen the colours of the blue jay and blue birds, the golden orioles and the scarlet cardinals, with, distinct from all and horrible to see, the dusky forms of the foul vultures who had been gathered to the spot by the warm, sickly scent of the dead man's blood. And now my beloved, drying her eyes, spoke softly to the man kneeling before her, saying in her sweet, clear voice: "Nay, nay, speak not to me of death; there has been too much already. God He knows I seek not your life--no, not more than she who succoured your father sought his. But, oh! if this last conflict might end for ever the encounters between your people and mine I would ask no more." From the Indians around there came a murmur that seemed born of surprise. "She forgives," they whispered to each other. "The white woman forgives the evil the Bear has done to her." And still they murmured, "She forgives." "Oh, yes! oh, yes!" Joice cried, hearing their words, while she stretched out her fair young arms so that, indeed, I thought she looked more like unto an angel than before. "Yes, if forgiveness rests with me, then do I indeed forgive. And you, my friends," turning to those of our own race who stood around, "will you not forgive too; will you not make this day one that shall end all strife between them and us? Oh! if thus we could forget the wrongs that each has done to the other, if the red man will forget the white man's attacks on him and the white men forget the Indian's revenge, how happily we might all dwell together in peace for ever."