The Moccasin Maker | Page 9

rare intervals made brief trips to her father's
house; but she never received a penny from her strange parent, and
knew of but one home which was worthy the name. That was in the
Canadian wilderness where the Indian Mission held out its arms to her,
and the beloved sister made her more welcome than words could imply.
Four pretty children had come to grace this forest household, where
young George Mansion, still the veriest right hand of the missionary,
had grown into a magnificent type of Mohawk manhood. These years
had brought him much, and he had accomplished far more than idle
chance could ever throw in his way. He had saved his salary that he
earned as interpreter in the church, and had purchased some desirable
property, a beautiful estate of two hundred acres, upon which he some

day hoped to build a home. He had mastered six Indian languages,
which, with his knowledge of English and his wonderful fluency in his
own tribal Mohawk, gave him command of eight tongues, an advantage
which soon brought him the position of Government interpreter in the
Council of the great "Six Nations," composing the Iroquois race. Added
to this, through the death of an uncle he came into the younger title of
his family, which boasted blood of two noble lines. His father, speaker
of the Council, held the elder title, but that did not lessen the
importance of young George's title of chief.
Lydia never forgot the first time she saw him robed in the full costume
of his office. Hitherto she had regarded him through all her comings
and goings as her playmate, friend and boon companion; he had been to
her something that had never before entered her life--he had brought
warmth, kindness, fellowship and a peculiar confidential humanity that
had been entirely lacking in the chill English home of her childhood.
But this day, as he stood beside his veteran father, ready to take his
place among the chiefs of the Grand Council, she saw revealed another
phase of his life and character; she saw that he was destined to be a
man among men, and for the first time she realized that her boy
companion had gone a little beyond her, perhaps a little above her.
They were a strange pair as they stood somewhat apart, unconscious of
the picture they made. She, a gentle-born, fair English girl of twenty,
her simple blue muslin frock vying with her eyes in color. He, tawny
skinned, lithe, straight as an arrow, the royal blood of generations of
chiefs and warriors pulsing through his arteries, his clinging buckskin
tunic and leggings fringed and embroidered with countless quills, and
endless stitches of colored moosehair. From his small, neat moccasins
to his jet black hair tipped with an eagle plume he was every inch a
man, a gentleman, a warrior.
But he was approaching her with the same ease with which he wore his
ordinary "white" clothes--garments, whether buckskin or broadcloth,
seemed to make but slight impression on him.
"Miss Bestman," he said, "I should like you to meet my mother and
father. They are here, and are old friends of your sister and Mr. Evans.

My mother does not speak English, but she knows you are my friend."
And presently Lydia found herself shaking hands with the elder chief,
speaker of the council, who spoke English rather well, and with a little
dark woman folded within a "broadcloth" and wearing the leggings,
moccasins and short dress of her people. A curious feeling of shyness
overcame the girl as her hand met that of George Mansion's mother,
who herself was the most retiring, most thoroughly old-fashioned
woman of her tribe. But Lydia felt that she was in the presence of one
whom the young chief held far and away as above himself, as above
her, as the best and greatest woman of his world; his very manner
revealed it, and Lydia honored him within her heart at that moment
more than she had ever done before.
But Chief George Mansion's mother, small and silent through long
habit and custom, had acquired a certain masterful dignity of her own,
for within her slender brown fingers she held a power that no man of
her nation could wrest from her. She was "Chief Matron" of her entire
blood relations, and commanded the enviable position of being the one
and only person, man or woman, who could appoint a chief to fill the
vacancy of one of the great Mohawk law-makers whose seat in Council
had been left vacant when the voice of the Great Spirit called him to the
happy hunting grounds. Lydia had heard of this national honor which
was the right and title of this frail little moccasined Indian woman with
whom