As soon as the prisoners were secured, Martin and Graves and the soldiers employed themselves cutting up the venison and preparing it for dinner, while the Strawberry and the Indian woman were collecting wood for a fire. In the mean while Captain Sinclair, Alfred, Malachi, and John were seated by the prisoners, and directing their attention to Percival, whom they had been compelled to bind, that he might not make his escape; for his sojourn of nearly two years in the woods with the Indians, without seeing the face of a white man, had (as has been invariably proved to be the fact in every instance where the parties were very young) wholly obliterated, for the time, his recollections of his former life--so rapid is our falling off to the savage state. To the questions of Alfred he returned no reply, and appeared not to understand him. "Let me try him, sir," said Malachi, "I will speak to him in the Injun tongue, he has perhaps forgotten his own. It is wonderful how soon we return to a state of nature when we are once in the woods." Malachi then spoke to Percival in the Indian language; Percival listened for some time, and at last replied in the same tongue. "What does he say, Malachi?" said Alfred. "He says he will sing his own death song; that he is the son of a warrior, and he will die like a brave." "Why, the boy is metamorphosed," said Captain Sinclair; "is it possible that so short a time could have produced this?" "Yes, sir," replied Malachi; "in young people a very short time will change them thus, but it won't last long. If he were to meet again with his mother at the settlement, he would by degrees forget his Injun life and become reconciled; a woman has more effect than a man. Let the Strawberry speak to him. You see, sir, he is bound, and considers himself a captive, and let him loose we must not, until we have done our work; after that, there will be no fear, and when he has been with us a short time, he will come all right again." Malachi called the Strawberry, and told her to speak to Percival about his home and his mother, and everything connected with the farm. The Strawberry sat down by Percival, and in her soft tones talked to him in her own tongue of his father and mother, of his cousins, and how he had been taken by the Indians when he was hunting, how his mother had wept for him, and all had lamented his loss; running on in a low musical key from one thing to another connected and associated with his former life in the settlement, and it was evident that at last he now listened with attention. The Strawberry continued to talk to him thus, for more than an hour, when Alfred again addressed him and said, "Percival, don't you know me?" "Yes," replied Percival in English, "I do; you are my brother Alfred." "All's right now, sir," said Malachi; "only he must be kept fast; but the lad's coming to his senses again. The Strawberry will talk to him again by-and-bye."