The expression of the brother's countenance underwent another change. In place of the childish importance with which he had hitherto replied to the questions of his sister, a look of overreaching cunning gathered about his dull eye. The organ glanced slowly and cautiously around him, as if its owner expected to detect some visible sign of those covert intentions he so evidently distrusted. Instead of answering, the wanderer continued his meal, though less like one who had need of sustenance, than one resolved to make no communications which might prove dangerous. This change was not unobserved by Faith, or by any of those who so intently watched the means by which she had been endeavoring to thread the confused ideas of one so dull, and yet who at need seemed so practised in savage artifice. She prudently altered her manner of interrogating, by endeavoring to lead his thoughts to other matters. "I warrant me," continued the sister, "that thou now beginnest to call to mind the times when thou led'st the cattle among the bushes, and how thou wert wont to call on Faith to give thee food, when a-weary with threading the woods in quest of the kine. Hast ever been assailed by the Narragansetts thyself, Whittal, when dwelling in the house of a Pale-face?" The brother ceased eating. Again he appeared to muse as intently as was possible, for one of his circumscribed intellects. But shaking his head in the negative, he silently resumed the grateful office of mastication. "What! hast come to be a warrior, and never known a scalp taken, or seen a fire lighted in the roof of a wigwam?" Whittal laid down the food, and turned to his sister. His face was teeming with a wild and fierce meaning, and he indulged in a low but triumphant laugh. When this exhibition of satisfaction was over, he consented to reply. "Certain," he said. "We went on a path, in the night, against the lying Yengeese, and no burning of the woods ever scorched the 'arth as we blackened their fields! All their proud housen were turned into piles of coals." "And where and when did you this act of brave vengeance?" "They called the place after the bird of night as if an Indian name could save them from an Indian massacre!" "Ha! 'Tis of the Wish-Ton-Wish thou speakest But thou wast a sufferer, and not an actor, brother in that heartless burning." "Thou liest like a wicked woman of the Pale faces, as thou art! Nipset was only a boy on that path, but he went with his people. I tell thee, we singed the very 'arth with our brands, and not a head of them all ever rose again from the ashes."