Page:Pioneersorsource01cooprich.djvu/187

 soil, has not the best right to tread these hills with the lightest conscience."

Mohegan turned solemnly to the speaker, and, with the peculiarly significant gestures of an Indian, he spoke:—

"Father, you are not yet past the summer of life; your limbs are young. Go to the highest hill, and look around you. All that you see, from the rising to the setting sun, from the head waters of the great spring, to. where the 'crooked river' is hid by the hills, is his. He has Delaware blood, and his right is strong. But the brother of Miquon is just: he will cut the country in two parts, as the river cuts the low-lands, and will say to the 'Young Eagle,' Child of the Delawares! take it—keep it—and be a chief in the land of your fathers."

"Never!" exclaimed the young hunter, with a vehemence that destroyed the rapt attention with which the divine and his daughter were listening to the earnest manner of the Indian—"The wolf of the forest is not more rapacious for his prey, than that man is greedy for gold; and yet his glidings into wealth are as subtle as the movements of a serpent."

"Forbear, forbear, my son, forbear," interrupted Mr. Grant.—"These angry passions must be subdued. The accidental injury you have received from Judge Temple, has heightened the sense of your hereditary wrongs. But remember, that the one was unintentional, and that the other is the effect of political changes, which have, in their course, greatly lowered the pride of kings, and swept mighty nations from the face of the earth. Where now are the Philistines, who so often held the children of Israel in bondage! or that city of Babylon, which rioted in luxury and vice, and who styled herself the Queen of Nations, in the