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THE PROUD GRANDFATHER 89
CUAPTER IV.
“Herheart is in the wild wood;
Her heart {s not here.
. . Her heart is in the wild wood;
It was hunting the deer.”
It would bave been an unnatural thing had that picturesque
young mother abandoned the woods, and prisoned herself in a quaint
old Dutch house, under the best circumstances.. The wild bird
which has fluttered freely from its nest through a thousand forests,
might as well be expected to love its cage, as this poor wild girl her
new home, with its dreary ‘stillness and its leaden regularity. But
love was all-powerful in that wild heart. It had brought Malacska
from her forest home, separated her from her tribe in its hour of
bitter defeat, and sent her a forlorn wanderer among strangers that
regarded her almost with loathing. - |
. The elder Danforth was a just man, but hard as granite in his
prejudices.. An only son had been murdered by the savages to whom
this poor young creature belonged. His blood — allof his being that
might descend to posterity —had been mingled with the accursed
. race who had sacrificed him, Gladly would -he have rent the two
races asuniler, in the very person of his grandchild, could the pure
half of his being’ been thus preserved. fe
_ But he was a proud, childish old man, and there was something
in the boy’s eyes, in the brave lift of his head, and in his. caressing
manner, which filled the void in his heart, half with love and half
with pain. He could no more separate the two passions in his own
soul, than he could drain the savage blood from the little boy’s veins,
_ But the house-mother, the gentle wife, could see nothing but her
son’s smile in that young face, nothing but his look in the large eyes,
which, black in color, still possessed something of the azure light
that had distinguished those of the father. oe
The boy was more cheerful and bird-like than his mother, for all
her youth had gone out on the banks of the pond where her husband
died. Always submissive, always gentle, she was nevertheless a
melancholy woman. <A bird which had followed its young out into
strange lands, and caged it there, could not have hovered around it
more hopelessly.
Nothing but her husband’s dying wish woulll have kept Malacska
in Manhattan, She thought of her own pcople incessantly — of her
broken, harassed tribe, desolated by the death of her father, and
whose young chief she had carried off and given to strangers.
But shame dyed Malaeska’s cheek ag she thought of these things
OT