Page:Nattie Nesmith (1870).pdf/218

 After the first heat of indignation toward the ruthless perpetrators had passed away, a despairing gloom seemed not only to paint itself on his face, but to envelop his whole person as in a shroud. He sat down on the great, flat rock which had lain at the entrance of the wigwam, and, with his eyes bent on the smoldering mass, rocked his lithe body to and fro, after the manner of Indians, and wailed in an undertone.

But his first words were not of sorrow for the fallen roof of his nativity and early years, nor pity for his father, the old gray-haired chieftain, who would return to find the home which he loved a blackened ruin. The first low cry that escaped the youth was:

"Oh, Nathalie, what a fate has been thine! Would it not have been better, had I obeyed my father's command to make thee my bride? Then mightest thou have escaped this horrid death. Yet, how know I but thou wouldst have preferred it to being an Indian's mate, the wife of Torch