its principal idea even more obscure than in the original. But as his reluctant
lips were in the act of parting, Ellen lifted a finger, and with a keen glance
from her quick eye at the still attentive Inez, she interrupted him.
    »Spare your breath,« she said; »all that a savage says is not to be repeated
before a Christian Lady.«
    Inez started, blushed, and bowed with an air of reserve, as she coldly
thanked the old man for his intentions and observed that she could now wish to
be alone.
    »My daughters have no need of ears to understand what a great Dahcotah
says,« returned the trapper, addressing himself to the expectant Mahtoree. »The
look he has given and the signs he has made, are enough. They understand him.
They wish to think of his words; for the children of great braves, such as their
fathers are, do nothing without much thought.«
    With this explanation, so flattering to the energy of his eloquence, and so
promising to his future hopes, the Teton was every way content. He made the
customary ejaculation of assent, and prepared to retire. Saluting the females in
the cold, but dignified manner of his people, he drew his robe about him, and
moved from the spot where he had stood, with an air of ill-concealed triumph.
    But there had been a stricken, though a motionless and unobserved auditor of
the foregoing scene. Not a syllable had fallen from the lips of the long and
anxiously expected husband, that had not gone directly to the heart of his
unoffending wife. In this manner had he wooed her from the lodge of her father,
and it was to listen to similar pictures of the renown and deeds of the greatest
brave in her tribe, that she had shut her ears to the tender tales of so many of
the Sioux youths.
    As the Teton turned to leave his lodge, in the manner just mentioned, he
found this unexpected and half-forgotten object before him. She stood, in the
humble guise and with the shrinking air of an Indian girl, holding the pledge of
their former love in her arms, directly in his path. Starting, the chief
regained the marble-like indifference of countenance which distinguished in so
remarkable a degree the restrained or more artificial expression of his
features, and signed to her, with an air of authority, to give place.
    »Is not Tachechana the daughter of a chief!« demanded a subdued voice, in
which pride struggled with anguish; »were not her brothers, braves!«