"Take the bowl," said the little invalid, "and carry it to my mother's lodge."
This was accordingly done. The contents of the bowl were found to consist principally of a decoction of the root of the May-apple, the most deadly poison known among the Indians.
It is not in the power of language to describe the indignation that pervaded the little community when this discovery was made known. The squaws ran to and fro, as is their custom when excited, each vying with the other in heaping invectives upon the culprit. For the present, however, no further punishment was inflicted upon her, and, the first burst of rage over, she was treated with silent abhorrence.
The little patient was removed to the lodge of the Old Queen and strictly guarded, while her enemy was left to wander in silence and solitude about the fields and woods, until the return of her husband should determine her punishment.
In a few days, the excursion being over, the Big White Man and his party returned to the village. Contrary to the custom of savages, he did not, in his first passion at learning the attempt on the life of his little sister, take summary vengeance on the offender. Instead, he contented himself with banishing the squaw from his lodge, never to return, and in condemning her to hoe corn in a distant part of the large field or inclosure which served the whole community for a garden.
Although thereafter she would still show her vindictiveness toward the little girl by striking at her with her hoe, or by some other spiteful action whenever, by chance, Eleanor and her companions wandered into that vicinity, yet she was either too well watched or stood too much in awe of her former husband to repeat the attempt upon his sister's life.
Four years had now elapsed since the capture of little Nelly. Her heart was by nature warm and affectionate, and the unbounded tenderness of those among whom she dwelt called forth in her a corresponding feeling. She regarded the chief and his mother with love and reverence, and had so completely acquired their language and customs as almost to have forgotten her own.
So identified had she become with the tribe that the remembrance of her home and family had nearly faded from her mind--all but the memory of her mother, her mother, whom she had loved with a strength of affection natural to her warm and ardent disposition, and to whom her heart still clung with a fondness that no time or change could destroy.