were foully dealt with and poisoned. So two noted old Powahs from
Wauhktukook, on the great river Connecticut, were sent for to discover
the murderers. Then these poor heathen got together in a great wigwam,
where the old wizards undertook, by their spells and incantations, to
consult the invisible powers in the matter. I asked Wauwoonemeen if she
knew how they did practise on the occasion; whereupon she said that none
but men were allowed to be in the wigwam, but that she could hear the
beating of sticks on the ground, and the groans and howlings and dismal
mutterings of the Powahs, and that she, with another young woman,
venturing to peep through a hole in the back of the wigwam, saw a great
many people sitting on the ground, and the two Powahs before the fire,
jumping and smiting their breasts, and rolling their eyes very
frightfully.

"But what came of it?" asked Rebecca. "Did the Evil Spirit whom they
thus called upon testify against himself, by telling who were his
instruments in mischief?"

The girl said she had never heard of any discovery of the poisoners, if
indeed there were such. She told us, moreover, that many of the best
people in the tribe would have no part in the business, counting it
sinful; and that the chief actors were much censured by the ministers,
and so ashamed of it that they drove the Powahs out of the village, the
women and boys chasing them and beating them with sticks and frozen
snow, so that they had to take to the woods in a sorry plight.

We gave the girl some small trinkets, and a fair piece of cloth for an
apron, whereat she was greatly pleased. We were all charmed with her
good parts, sweetness of countenance, and discourse and ready wit, being
satisfied thereby that Nature knoweth no difference between Europe and