Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/32

 know; and this limited amount of knowledge she had taught to her grandchild, who was a quick and retentive pupil; and though she went to school occasionally when opportunity offered, there was little to be gained there, and possibly neither Alice nor her grandmother dreamed there was more for them to know.

The girl was contented—she had no ambitious imaginings, she knew no lot more favored than her own; she had few acquaintances—her position did not admit of it—but she had one friend, her constant companion and welcome attendant in all her wanderings: this was Pashemet, a young Indian lad some years older than herself.

Pashemet belonged to the tribe of the Naumkeags, once a powerful and prosperous race, whose hunting-grounds had included the site of the present town. He was the son of one of the Sagamores, or chiefs, who had embraced Christianity, and had always maintained friendly relations with the white settlers. No two beings could have been imagined less alike than the calm, grave, self-contained Indian lad, and the quick, im