The sun at last sunk in the western shade, And the thick forest cast a darker frown, And now they paused amid an open glade, More than a bow-shot from the thickets brown; Then Father Williams to the hunter said, “Where! where! O Waban, is Neponset’s town?” And Waban answered, “Full one-half a sleep This march requires to bring us to its steep.” XXX. “Then here we rest, to take whate’er may come,” Our Founder said, “and do you all prepare To tread the realms that lie beyond the tomb; There are no foes or persecutors there, To drive the guiltless forth, and bid them roam In savage wilds; yet do not quite despair; When comes the foe,--and come he doubtless will, Brother! we must be firm--if needful, we must kill!” XXXI. “Waban is firm,” the hunter said, and smote His naked breast, and raised his stature high; “Yet hear the red man still;--not far remote Is Waban’s rock, where he is wont to lie When the far-striding moose has tired his foot, And night comes down, and tempests rule the sky; There may we rest; the foe’s approach is hard But by one pass, and that will Waban guard.” XXXII. The place they sought;--’twas down a rocky dell, Where scarce the palfreys found a footing sure, Where deeper darkness from the forest fell, And thicker boscage did the pass immure; At last, before them, like a citadel, Rose a tall rock, whose frowning frontals lower Over a narrow lea, with brambles dense On either side like an impervious fence. XXXIII. “Here,” said the red man, (as he raised a mass Of vines that clustered down the rock’s descent,) “Here’s Waban’s cavern, here is ample space For thee and thine; in this rude tenement Ten hunters oft have found their biding place, Nor in it felt themselves too closely pent; Waban will now below the opening raise, In yon dry fagots’ heap, the mounting blaze.” XXXIV. “Stay! stay!” said Williams, “wouldst thou lure the foe? Wouldst start the flame to tell him where we sleep?” The hunter smiled: “My Sachem does not know How true the foe will to our footsteps keep; He hears, perchance, e’en now our accents low, Or marks us from some tree on yonder steep; Waban will wake the fire; ’twill serve to show His posture, numbers, and will aid our blow.” XXXV. Williams assented; and while Waban fired The arid fagots, he the burdens took From off the palfreys, that, o’erwrought and tired, Now stretched their toil-worn limbs and stoutly shook Their liberated frames, and fuller breath respired, And quiet grazed the lea. Then to the rock The father hastened with a blazing brand; His wife and children, linking hand in hand, XXXVI.