But when Wenona took the resolution of
ending her earthly sorrows, no doubt there were other passions beside
love influencing her mind.
Love was the most powerful. With him she loved, life would have been all
happiness--without him, all misery. Such was the reasoning of her
young heart.
But she resented the importunity of the hunter whose pretensions her
parents favored. How often she had told him she would die before she
would become his wife; and he would smile, as if he had but little faith
in the words of a woman. Now he should see that her hatred to him was
not assumed; and she would die such a death that he might know that she
feared neither him nor a death of agony.
And while her parents mourned their unkindness, her lover would admire
that firmness which made death more welcome than the triumph of
his rival.
And sacred is the spot where the devoted girl closed her earthly
sorrows. Spirits are ever hovering near the scene. The laugh of the
Dahcotah is checked when his canoe glides near the spot. He points to
the bluff, and as the shades of evening are throwing dimness and a
mystery around the beauty of the lake, and of the mountains, he fancies
he can see the arms of the girl as she tosses them wildly in the air.
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