“Well,” said Jacques, “_he_ didn’t gain much by sticking to the truth, I think.”
“I’m not so sure of _that_. The story goes on to say that he _rejoiced_ that he had done so, and wouldn’t draw back even when he was in the flames. But the point lies here, Jacques: so deep an impression did the old man’s conduct make on his people, that from that day forward they were noted for their Christian life and conduct. They brought up their children with a deeper reverence for the truth than they would otherwise have done, always bearing in affectionate remembrance, and holding up to them as an example, the unflinching truthfulness of the good old man who was burned in the year of the terrible persecutions; and at last their influence and example had such an effect that the Protestant religion spread like wild-fire, far and wide around them, so that the very thing was accomplished for which the old pastor said he would have died—accomplished, too, very much in consequence of his death, and in a way and to an extent that very likely would not have been the case had he lived and preached among them for a hundred years.”
“I don’t understand it, nohow,” said Jacques; “it seems to me right both ways and wrong both ways, and all upside down every how.”
Charley smiled. “Your remark is about as clear as my head on the subject, Jacques; but I still remain convinced that truth is _right_ and that falsehood is _wrong_, and that we should stick to the first through thick and thin.”
“I s’pose,” remarked the hunter, who had walked along in deep cogitation, for the last five minutes, and had apparently come to some conclusion of profound depth and sagacity—“I s’pose that it’s all human natur’; that some men takes to preachin’ as Injins take to huntin’, and that to understand sich things requires them to begin young,’ and risk their lives in it, as I would in followin’ up a grizzly she-bear with cubs.”
“Yonder is an illustration of one part of your remark. They begin _young_ enough, anyhow,” said Charley, pointing as he spoke to an opening in the bushes, where a particularly small Indian boy stood in the act of discharging an arrow.
The two men halted to watch his movements. According to a common custom among juvenile Indians during the warm months of the year, he was dressed in _nothing_ save a mere rag tied round his waist. His body was very brown, extremely round, fat, and wonderfully diminutive, while his little legs and arms were disproportionately small. He was so young as to be barely able to walk, and yet there he stood, his black eyes glittering with excitement, his tiny bow bent to its utmost, and a blunt-headed arrow about to be discharged at a squirrel, whose flight had been suddenly arrested by the unexpected apparition of Charley and Jacques. As he stood there for a single instant, perfectly motionless, he might have been mistaken for a grotesque statue of an Indian cupid. Taking advantage of the squirrel’s pause the child let fly the arrow, hit it exactly on the point of the nose, and turned it over, dead—a consummation which he greeted with a rapid succession of frightful yells.