The bear and deer speak to me with tongues I do not
understand. _Ma mere! ma mere_! I must know whether I am a Delaware or
pale face!--whether one or the other, I am still yours--yours always!
Speak! speak with a straight tongue to your child!"
"Ough! ough! ough!" groaned the old woman, looking at him wistfully,
and plainly struggling with herself--hesitating between two courses.
"Speak!" said Verty, with a glow in his eye, which made him resemble
a young leopard of the wild--"speak, _ma mere_!--I am no longer a
child! I go into a new land now, and how shall it be? As a red face,
or a long knife--which am I? Speak, _ma mere_--say if I am a Delaware,
whose place is the woods, or a white, whose life must take him from
the deer forever!"
The struggle was ended; Verty could not have uttered words more fatal
to his discovering anything. He raised an insuperable barrier to
any revelations--if, indeed, there existed any mystery--by his
alternative. Was he a Delaware, and thus doomed to live in the forest
with his old Indian mother--or was he a white, in which case, he would
leave her? Pride, cunning, above all, deep and pure affection, sealed
the old woman's lips, if she had thought of opening them.
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