There was no time to deliberate--should she absent herself, she would be
suspected, and yet a little while ere the Deer-killer would return, and
her anxious heart would be at rest.
The feast was prepared, and the crier called for all virgins to enter
the sacred ring.
Wenona went forward with a beating heart; she was not a wife, and soon
must be a mother. Wanska, the Merry Heart, was there, and many others
who wondered at the pale looks of Wenona--she who had been on a journey,
and who ought to have returned with color bright as the dying sun, whose
light illumined earth, sky and water.
As they entered the ring a party of warriors approached the circle.
Wenona does not look towards them, and yet the throbbings of her heart
were not to be endured. Her trembling limbs refused to sustain her, as
the Deer-killer, stalking towards the ring, calls aloud--"Take her from
the sacred feast; should she eat with the maidens?--she, under whose
bosom lies a warrior's child? She is unworthy."
And as the unhappy girl, with features of stone and glaring eyes, gazed
upon him bewildered, he rudely led her from the ring.
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