'Child!' said old Tisquantum, rousing himself from the half-dreamy reverie in which he had been sitting, and enjoying the warm sunbeams as they fell on his now feeble limbs, and long white hair. 'Child, are you talking again of Henrich leaving us? It is wrong of you to doubt him. My son has given me his word that he will never take you from me until Mahneto recalls my spirit to himself, and I dwell again with my fathers. Has he not also said that he will never leave or forsake you and his boy? Why, then, do you make your heart sad? Henrich has never deceived us--he has never, in all the years that he has lived in our wigwam, and shared our wanderings, said the thing that was not: and shall we suspect him now? No, Oriana; I trust him as I would have trusted my own Tekoa: and had my brave boy lived he could not have been dearer to me than Henrich is. He could not have surpassed him in hunting or in war: he could not have guided and governed my people with more wisdom, now that I am too old and feeble to be their leader: and he could not have watched over my declining years with more of gentleness and love. Henrich will never desert us: no, not if we return to the head-quarters of our tribe near Paomet,[*] as I hope to do ere I close my eyes in death. So long as I feared my white son would leave us, and return to his own people, I never turned my feet towards Paomet; for he had wound himself into my heart, and had taken Tekoa's place there: and I saw that he had wound himself into your heart too, my child; and I knew that he was more to us than the land of our birth. Therefore I have kept my hunters wandering from north to south, and from east to west, and have visited the mountains, and the prairies, and the mighty rivers, and the great lakes; and have found a home in all. But now our Henrich is one of us, and never will forsake us for any others. Is he not Sachem of my warriors, and do they not look to him as their leader and their father? No; Henrich will never leave us now!' [Footnote: The native name for Cape Cod, near which the main body of the Nausetts resided.] And the old man, who had become excited during this long harangue, smiled at his children with love and confidence, and again leaned back and closed his eyes, relapsing into that quiet dreamy state in which the Indians, especially the more aged among them, are so fond of indulging.