WALLULAH. 8 1
whose blood is in your veins. Remember that they spoke burning words in the council, and went forth with the men to battle, and came back with their own garments stained with blood. You shudder 1 Is it at the thought of blood?"
The old wistful look came back, the old sadness was on the beautiful face again. One could see now why it was there.
"My father," she said sorrowfully, "Wallulah has tried to love those things, but she cannot. She can not change the heart the Great Spirit has given her. She cannot bring herself to be a woman of battle any more than she can sound a war-cry on her flute," and she lifted it as she spoke.
He took it into his own hands.
"It is this," he said, breaking down the sensitive girl in the same despotic way in which he bent the wills of warriors; " it is this that makes you weak. Is it a charm that draws the life from your heart? If so, it can be broken."
Another moment and the flute would have been broken in his ruthless hands and its fragments flung into the lake; but Wallulah, startled, caught it from him with a plaintive cry.
"It was my mother s. If you break it you will break my heart!"
The chiefs angry features quivered at the mention of her mother, and he instantly released the flute. Wallulah clasped it to her bosom as if it represented in some way the mother she had lost, and her eyes filled with tears. Again her father s hand rested on her head, and she knew that he too was thinking of her mother. Her nature rose up in revolt against the
