Jyanough was expected to act the part of chief mourner in these ceremonies; and the real affection he had entertained for his uncle induced him to comply, and to remain all that day, and all the following night, at the grate. But he refused to cover his face with soot--as is customary on such occasions of domestic sorrow--or to join the Powows in their frantic cries and exorcisms, to drive off the Weettakos from sucking the dead man's blood. The presence of Henrich seemed to annoy and irritate these priests of Satan; and he was glad to retire from a scene so repugnant to his better feelings, and to return to Oriana, by whose care and direction the unhappy Mailah and her infant had been promptly removed from the place of death and desolation, and conveyed to her own apartment in Tisquantums lodge.
Her kind efforts had restored the poor young widow to consciousness; and she now sat on the floor, with her child on her knee, listening with a calmness that almost seemed apathy, to the words of comfort that were uttered by the gentle Squaw-Sachem.
Mailah was very young. Scarcely sixteen summers had passed over her head; and yet--such is Indian life--she had already been a wife and a mother; and now, alas! she was a widow. Her grief had been passionate at the last, and had burst forth in that one wild cry that had startled Orianas ear in the forest. But that was over now, and she seemed resigned to her hard fate, and willing to endure it. Perhaps this was for her infant's sake; and, perhaps, her sensibilities were blunted by the life she had led, in common with the rest of her race and sex--a life in which the best feelings and sympathies of our nature are almost unknown. It was not until Oriana led her to speak of her past life, and the home of her youth--now desolate and in ruins--that tears of natural grief flowed from her eyes. Then she seemed roused to a full sense of all she had lost, end broke out into mournful lamentations for her murdered Lincoya, whose noble qualities and high lineage she eloquently extolled; while she sadly contrasted her present lonely and desolate position with her happiness as the squaw of so distinguished a warrior, and so successful a hunter.