John Smith looked after her in dismay.  If he had turned his only friend against him then was he indeed in a sad plight!

[Illustration:  Decorative]

CHAPTER X

THE LODGE IN THE WOODS

Neither the rest of that day nor the next had Smith any speech with Pocahontas.  True it was that she came accompanied by squaws and children, all eager to serve as cupbearers in order to observe the paleface closely.  But she put down the food beside him and did not linger.

By the middle of the second day Smith found himself less an object of interest.  Everyone in Werowocomoco had been to gaze at him and the older chiefs had sat and talked with him; but the Englishman could not discover what their opinion in regard to his coming or his future might be.  Now there seemed to be something afoot which was engaging the attention of the braves who congregated together before the long lodge.  Had it anything to do with his own fate, the captive wondered.  The children, too, had found other things to interest them.  He saw them, their little red bodies glistening in the sun, playing with the dogs or pretending they were a war party creeping through a hostile country.  Smith missed them peering about the opening of his lodge, half amused, half frightened, when he attempted to make friends.

He leaned idly against the side of the wigwam, watching two squaws not far away who were tanning a deerskin and cutting it in strips for thread.  Would the time ever come again, he wondered, when he would behold a white woman sewing or spinning?

He saw Pocahontas leave her lodge, but instead of coming in his direction, she ran towards the wigwams that skirted the forest and was soon out of sight.  He could not see that a young Indian boy, astounded to catch sight of her in that unaccustomed part of the village, went to meet her.

“Is Wansutis by her hearth?” asked Pocahontas.

“She is,” Claw-of-the-Eagle replied, and walked on beside her with no further word.

Pocahontas’s heart was beating a little faster than usual.  Wansutis still excited a feeling of awe and discomfort in the courageous child; she could not help experiencing a sort of terror when in her presence.  Nevertheless she had now come of her own accord to ask the old woman for aid.

Claw-of-the-Eagle, though he would have bitten his tongue off rather than acknowledge his curiosity, was most eager to learn what had brought the daughter of Powhatan to his adopted mother’s lodge.  He entered it with Pocahontas and pretended to be busying himself with stringing his bows in order to have an excuse for staying.

“Wansutis,” began Pocahontas, standing in the sunshine of the entrance, to the old woman who sat smoking in the darkest part of the lodge, “thou hast the knowledge of all the herbs of the fields and of the forests, those that harm and those that help.  Is it not so?”