It was the boy called Miantonimoh,
seeking some melancholy memorial of those with whom he had so long dwelt
in amity, if not in confidence.
One skilled in the history of savage passions might have found a clue to
the workings of the mind of the youth, in the play of his speaking
features. As his dark glittering eye rolled over the smouldering
fragments, it seemed to search keenly for some vestige of the human form.
The element however had done its work too greedily, to have left many
visible memorials of its fury. An object resembling that he sought,
however, caught his glance, and stepping lightly to the spot where it lay,
he raised the bone of a powerful arm from the brands. The flashing of his
eye, as it lighted on this sad object, was wild and exulting, like that
of the savage when he first feels the fierce joy of glutted vengeance; but
gentler recollections came with the gaze, and kinder feelings evidently
usurped the place of the hatred he had been taught to bear a race, who
were so fast sweeping his people from the earth. The relic fell from his
hand, and had Ruth been there to witness the melancholy and relenting
shade that clouded his swarthy features, she might have found pleasure in
the certainty that all her kindness had not been wasted.
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