Introduction

It is be­lieved that the scene of this tale, and most of the in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary to un­der­stand its al­lu­sions, are ren­dered suf­fi­ciently ob­vi­ous to the reader in the text it­self, or in the ac­com­pa­ny­ing notes. Still there is so much ob­scu­rity in the In­dian tra­di­tions, and so much con­fu­sion in the In­dian names, as to ren­der some ex­pla­na­tion use­ful.

Few men ex­hibit greater di­ver­sity, or, if we may so ex­press it, greater an­tithe­sis of char­ac­ter, than the na­tive war­rior of North Amer­ica. In war, he is dar­ing, boast­ful, cun­ning, ruth­less, self-deny­ing, and self-de­voted; in peace, just, gen­er­ous, hos­pitable, re­venge­ful, su­per­sti­tious, mod­est, and com­monly chaste. Th­ese are qual­i­ties, it is true, which do not dis­tin­guish all alike; but they are so far the pre­dom­i­nat­ing traits of these re­mark­able peo­ple as to be char­ac­ter­is­tic.

It is gen­er­ally be­lieved that the Abo­rig­ines of the Amer­i­can con­ti­nent have an Asi­atic ori­gin. There are many phys­i­cal as well as moral facts which cor­rob­o­rate this opin­ion, and some few that would seem to weigh against it.

The color of the In­dian, the writer be­lieves, is pe­cu­liar to him­self, and while his cheek­bones have a very strik­ing in­di­ca­tion of a Tar­tar ori­gin, his eyes have not. Cli­mate may have had great in­flu­ence on the for­mer, but it is dif­fi­cult to see how it can have pro­duced the sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ence which ex­ists in the lat­ter. The im­agery of the In­dian, both in his po­etry and in his or­a­tory, is ori­en­tal; chas­tened, and per­haps im­proved, by the lim­ited range of his prac­ti­cal knowl­edge. He draws his metaphors from the clouds, the sea­sons, the birds, the beasts, and the veg­etable world. In this, per­haps, he does no more than any other en­er­getic and imag­i­na­tive race would do, be­ing com­pelled to set bounds to fancy by ex­pe­ri­ence; but the North Amer­i­can In­dian clothes his ideas in a dress which is dif­fer­ent from that of the African, and is ori­en­tal in it­self. His lan­guage has the rich­ness and sen­ten­tious full­ness of the Chi­nese. He will ex­press a phrase in a word, and he will qual­ify the mean­ing of an en­tire sen­tence by a syl­la­ble; he will even con­vey dif­fer­ent sig­ni­fi­ca­tions by the sim­plest in­flec­tions of the voice.

Philol­o­gists have said that there are but two or three lan­guages, prop­erly speak­ing, among all the nu­mer­ous tribes which for­merly oc­cu­pied the coun­try that now com­poses the United States. They as­cribe the known dif­fi­culty one peo­ple have to un­der­stand an­other to cor­rup­tions and di­alects. The writer re­mem­bers to have been present at an in­ter­view be­tween two chiefs of the Great Prairies west of the Mis­sis­sippi, and when an in­ter­preter was in at­ten­dance who spoke both their lan­guages. The war­riors ap­peared to be on the most friendly terms, and seem­ingly con­versed much to­gether; yet, ac­cord­ing to the ac­count of the in­ter­preter, each was ab­so­lutely ig­no­rant of what the other said. They were of hos­tile tribes, brought to­gether by the in­flu­ence of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment; and it is wor­thy of re­mark, that a com­mon pol­icy led them both to adopt the same sub­ject. They mu­tu­ally ex­horted each other to be of use in the event of the chances of war throw­ing ei­ther of the par­ties into the hands of his en­e­mies. What­ever may be the truth, as re­spects the root and the ge­nius of the In­dian tongues, it is quite cer­tain they are now so dis­tinct in their words as to pos­sess most of the dis­ad­van­tages of strange lan­guages; hence much of the em­bar­rass­ment that has arisen in learn­ing their his­to­ries, and most of the un­cer­tainty which ex­ists in their tra­di­tions.

Like na­tions of higher pre­ten­sions, the Amer­i­can In­dian gives a very dif­fer­ent ac­count of his own tribe or race from that which is given by other peo­ple. He is much ad­dicted to over­es­ti­mat­ing his own per­fec­tions, and to un­der­valu­ing those of his ri­val or his en­emy; a trait which may pos­si­bly be thought cor­rob­o­ra­tive of the Mo­saic ac­count of the cre­ation.

The whites have as­sisted greatly in ren­der­ing the tra­di­tions of the Abo­rig­ines more ob­scure by their own man­ner of cor­rupt­ing names. Thus, the term used in the ti­tle of this book has un­der­gone the changes of Mahi­canni, Mo­hi­cans, and Mo­he­gans; the lat­ter be­ing the word com­monly used by the whites. When it is re­mem­bered that the Dutch (who first set­tled New York), the English, and the French, all gave ap­pel­la­tions to the tribes that dwelt within the coun­try which is the scene of this story, and that the In­di­ans not only gave dif­fer­ent names to their en­e­mies, but fre­quently to them­selves, the cause of the con­fu­sion will be un­der­stood.

In these pages, Lenni-Le­nape, Lenope, Delawares, Wa­panachki, and Mo­hi­cans, all mean the same peo­ple, or tribes of the same stock. The Mengwe, the Maquas, the Min­goes, and the Iro­quois, though not all strictly the same, are iden­ti­fied fre­quently by the speak­ers, be­ing po­lit­i­cally con­fed­er­ated and op­posed to those just named. Mingo was a term of pe­cu­liar re­proach, as were Mengwe and Maqua in a less de­gree.

The Mo­hi­cans were the pos­ses­sors of the coun­try first oc­cu­pied by the Euro­peans in this por­tion of the con­ti­nent. They were, con­se­quently, the first dis­pos­sessed; and the seem­ingly in­evitable fate of all these peo­ple, who dis­ap­pear be­fore the ad­vances, or it might be termed the in­roads, of civ­i­liza­tion, as the ver­dure of their na­tive forests falls be­fore the nip­ping frosts, is rep­re­sented as hav­ing al­ready be­fallen them. There is suf­fi­cient his­tor­i­cal truth in the pic­ture to jus­tify the use that has been made of it.

In point of fact, the coun­try which is the scene of the fol­low­ing tale has un­der­gone as lit­tle change, since the his­tor­i­cal events al­luded to had place, as al­most any other dis­trict of equal ex­tent within the whole lim­its of the United States. There are fash­ion­able and well-at­tended wa­ter­ing-places at and near the spring where Hawk­eye halted to drink, and roads tra­verse the forests where he and his friends were com­pelled to jour­ney with­out even a path. Glen’s has a large vil­lage; and while Wil­liam Henry, and even a fortress of later date, are only to be traced as ru­ins, there is an­other vil­lage on the shores of the Hor­i­can. But, be­yond this, the en­ter­prise and en­ergy of a peo­ple who have done so much in other places have done lit­tle here. The whole of that wilder­ness, in which the lat­ter in­ci­dents of the leg­end oc­curred, is nearly a wilder­ness still, though the red man has en­tirely de­serted this part of the state. Of all the tribes named in these pages, there ex­ist only a few half-civ­i­lized be­ings of the Onei­das, on the reser­va­tions of their peo­ple in New York. The rest have dis­ap­peared, ei­ther from the re­gions in which their fa­thers dwelt, or al­to­gether from the earth.

There is one point on which we would wish to say a word be­fore clos­ing this pref­ace. Hawk­eye calls the Lac du Saint Sacre­ment, the “Hor­i­can.” As we be­lieve this to be an ap­pro­pri­a­tion of the name that has its ori­gin with our­selves, the time has ar­rived, per­haps, when the fact should be frankly ad­mit­ted. While writ­ing this book, fully a quar­ter of a cen­tury since, it oc­curred to us that the French name of this lake was too com­pli­cated, the Amer­i­can too com­mon­place, and the In­dian too un­pro­nounce­able, for ei­ther to be used fa­mil­iarly in a work of fic­tion. Look­ing over an an­cient map, it was as­cer­tained that a tribe of In­di­ans, called “Les Hor­i­cans” by the French, ex­isted in the neigh­bor­hood of this beau­ti­ful sheet of wa­ter. As ev­ery word ut­tered by Natty Bumppo was not to be re­ceived as rigid truth, we took the lib­erty of putting the “Hor­i­can” into his mouth, as the sub­sti­tute for “Lake Ge­orge.” The name has ap­peared to find fa­vor, and all things con­sid­ered, it may pos­si­bly be quite as well to let it stand, in­stead of go­ing back to the House of Hanover for the ap­pel­la­tion of our finest sheet of wa­ter. We re­lieve our con­science by the con­fes­sion, at all events leav­ing it to ex­er­cise its au­thor­ity as it may see fit.

The Last of the Mohicans

I

Mine ear is open, and my heart pre­pared:
The worst is wordly loss thou canst un­fold:—
Say, is my king­dom lost?

Shake­speare

It was a fea­ture pe­cu­liar to the colo­nial wars of North Amer­ica, that the toils and dan­gers of the wilder­ness were to be en­coun­tered be­fore the ad­verse hosts could meet. A wide and ap­par­ently an im­per­vi­ous bound­ary of forests sev­ered the pos­ses­sions of the hos­tile prov­inces of France and Eng­land. The hardy colonist, and the trained Euro­pean who fought at his side, fre­quently ex­pended months in strug­gling against the rapids of the streams, or in ef­fect­ing the rugged passes of the moun­tains, in quest of an op­por­tu­nity to ex­hibit their courage in a more mar­tial con­flict. But, em­u­lat­ing the pa­tience and self-de­nial of the prac­ticed na­tive war­riors, they learned to over­come ev­ery dif­fi­culty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no re­cess of the woods so dark, nor any se­cret place so lovely, that it might claim ex­emp­tion from the in­roads of those who had pledged their blood to sa­ti­ate their vengeance, or to up­hold the cold and self­ish pol­icy of the dis­tant mon­archs of Europe.

Per­haps no dis­trict through­out the wide ex­tent of the in­ter­me­di­ate fron­tiers can fur­nish a live­lier pic­ture of the cru­elty and fierce­ness of the sav­age war­fare of those pe­ri­ods than the coun­try which lies be­tween the head wa­ters of the Hud­son and the ad­ja­cent lakes.

The fa­cil­i­ties which na­ture had there of­fered to the march of the com­bat­ants were too ob­vi­ous to be ne­glected. The length­ened sheet of the Cham­plain stretched from the fron­tiers of Canada, deep within the bor­ders of the neigh­bor­ing prov­ince of New York, form­ing a nat­u­ral pas­sage across half the dis­tance that the French were com­pelled to mas­ter in or­der to strike their en­e­mies. Near its south­ern ter­mi­na­tion, it re­ceived the con­tri­bu­tions of an­other lake, whose wa­ters were so limpid as to have been ex­clu­sively se­lected by the Je­suit mis­sion­ar­ies to per­form the typ­i­cal pu­rifi­ca­tion of bap­tism, and to ob­tain for it the ti­tle of lake “du Saint Sacre­ment.” The less zeal­ous English thought they con­ferred a suf­fi­cient honor on its un­sul­lied foun­tains, when they be­stowed the name of their reign­ing prince, the sec­ond of the house of Hanover. The two united to rob the un­tu­tored pos­ses­sors of its wooded scenery of their na­tive right to per­pet­u­ate its orig­i­nal ap­pel­la­tion of “Hor­i­can.”1

Wind­ing its way among count­less is­lands, and imbed­ded in moun­tains, the “holy lake” ex­tended a dozen leagues still fur­ther to the south. With the high plain that there in­ter­posed it­self to the fur­ther pas­sage of the wa­ter, com­menced a portage of as many miles, which con­ducted the ad­ven­turer to the banks of the Hud­son, at a point where, with the usual ob­struc­tions of the rapids, or rifts, as they were then termed in the lan­guage of the coun­try, the river be­came nav­i­ga­ble to the tide.

While, in the pur­suit of their dar­ing plans of an­noy­ance, the rest­less en­ter­prise of the French even at­tempted the dis­tant and dif­fi­cult gorges of the Al­leghany, it may eas­ily be imag­ined that their prover­bial acute­ness would not over­look the nat­u­ral ad­van­tages of the dis­trict we have just de­scribed. It be­came, em­phat­i­cally, the bloody arena, in which most of the bat­tles for the mas­tery of the colonies were con­tested. Forts were erected at the dif­fer­ent points that com­manded the fa­cil­i­ties of the route, and were taken and re­taken, razed and re­built, as vic­tory alighted on the hos­tile ban­ners. While the hus­band­man shrank back from the dan­ger­ous passes, within the safer bound­aries of the more an­cient set­tle­ments, armies larger than those that had of­ten dis­posed of the scepters of the mother coun­tries, were seen to bury them­selves in these forests, whence they rarely re­turned but in skele­ton bands, that were hag­gard with care or de­jected by de­feat. Though the arts of peace were un­known to this fa­tal re­gion, its forests were alive with men; its shades and glens rang with the sounds of mar­tial mu­sic, and the echoes of its moun­tains threw back the laugh, or re­peated the wan­ton cry, of many a gal­lant and reck­less youth, as he hur­ried by them, in the noon­tide of his spir­its, to slum­ber in a long night of for­get­ful­ness.

It was in this scene of strife and blood­shed that the in­ci­dents we shall at­tempt to re­late oc­curred, dur­ing the third year of the war which Eng­land and France last waged for the pos­ses­sion of a coun­try that nei­ther was des­tined to re­tain.

The im­be­cil­ity of her mil­i­tary lead­ers abroad, and the fa­tal want of en­ergy in her coun­cils at home, had low­ered the char­ac­ter of Great Bri­tain from the proud el­e­va­tion on which it had been placed by the tal­ents and en­ter­prise of her for­mer war­riors and states­men. No longer dreaded by her en­e­mies, her ser­vants were fast los­ing the con­fi­dence of self-re­spect. In this mor­ti­fy­ing abase­ment, the colonists, though in­no­cent of her im­be­cil­ity, and too hum­ble to be the agents of her blun­ders, were but the nat­u­ral par­tic­i­pa­tors. They had re­cently seen a cho­sen army from that coun­try, which, rev­er­enc­ing as a mother, they had blindly be­lieved in­vin­ci­ble—an army led by a chief who had been se­lected from a crowd of trained war­riors, for his rare mil­i­tary en­dow­ments, dis­grace­fully routed by a hand­ful of French and In­di­ans, and only saved from an­ni­hi­la­tion by the cool­ness and spirit of a Vir­ginian boy, whose riper fame has since dif­fused it­self, with the steady in­flu­ence of moral truth, to the ut­ter­most con­fines of Chris­ten­dom.2 A wide fron­tier had been laid naked by this un­ex­pected dis­as­ter, and more sub­stan­tial evils were pre­ceded by a thou­sand fan­ci­ful and imag­i­nary dan­gers. The alarmed colonists be­lieved that the yells of the sav­ages min­gled with ev­ery fit­ful gust of wind that is­sued from the in­ter­minable forests of the west. The ter­rific char­ac­ter of their mer­ci­less en­e­mies in­creased im­mea­sur­ably the nat­u­ral hor­rors of war­fare. Num­ber­less re­cent mas­sacres were still vivid in their rec­ol­lec­tions; nor was there any ear in the prov­inces so deaf as not to have drunk in with avid­ity the nar­ra­tive of some fear­ful tale of mid­night mur­der, in which the na­tives of the forests were the prin­ci­pal and bar­barous ac­tors. As the cred­u­lous and ex­cited trav­eler re­lated the haz­ardous chances of the wilder­ness, the blood of the timid cur­dled with ter­ror, and moth­ers cast anx­ious glances even at those chil­dren which slum­bered within the se­cu­rity of the largest towns. In short, the mag­ni­fy­ing in­flu­ence of fear be­gan to set at naught the cal­cu­la­tions of rea­son, and to ren­der those who should have re­mem­bered their man­hood, the slaves of the basest pas­sions. Even the most con­fi­dent and the stoutest hearts be­gan to think the is­sue of the con­test was be­com­ing doubt­ful; and that ab­ject class was hourly in­creas­ing in num­bers, who thought they fore­saw all the pos­ses­sions of the English crown in Amer­ica sub­dued by their Chris­tian foes, or laid waste by the in­roads of their re­lent­less al­lies.

When, there­fore, in­tel­li­gence was re­ceived at the fort which cov­ered the south­ern ter­mi­na­tion of the portage be­tween the Hud­son and the lakes, that Mont­calm had been seen mov­ing up the Cham­plain, with an army “nu­mer­ous as the leaves on the trees,” its truth was ad­mit­ted with more of the craven re­luc­tance of fear than with the stern joy that a war­rior should feel, in find­ing an en­emy within reach of his blow. The news had been brought, to­ward the de­cline of a day in mid­sum­mer, by an In­dian run­ner, who also bore an ur­gent re­quest from Munro, the com­man­der of a work on the shore of the “holy lake,” for a speedy and pow­er­ful re­in­force­ment. It has al­ready been men­tioned that the dis­tance be­tween these two posts was less than five leagues. The rude path, which orig­i­nally formed their line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, had been widened for the pas­sage of wag­ons; so that the dis­tance which had been trav­eled by the son of the for­est in two hours, might eas­ily be ef­fected by a de­tach­ment of troops, with their nec­es­sary bag­gage, be­tween the ris­ing and set­ting of a sum­mer sun. The loyal ser­vants of the Bri­tish crown had given to one of these for­est-fast­nesses the name of Wil­liam Henry, and to the other that of Fort Ed­ward, call­ing each af­ter a fa­vorite prince of the reign­ing fam­ily. The vet­eran Scotch­man just named held the first, with a reg­i­ment of reg­u­lars and a few provin­cials; a force re­ally by far too small to make head against the for­mi­da­ble power that Mont­calm was lead­ing to the foot of his earthen mounds. At the lat­ter, how­ever, lay Gen­eral Webb, who com­manded the armies of the king in the north­ern prov­inces, with a body of more than five thou­sand men. By unit­ing the sev­eral de­tach­ments of his com­mand, this of­fi­cer might have ar­rayed nearly dou­ble that num­ber of com­bat­ants against the en­ter­pris­ing French­man, who had ven­tured so far from his re­in­force­ments, with an army but lit­tle su­pe­rior in num­bers.

But un­der the in­flu­ence of their de­graded for­tunes, both of­fi­cers and men ap­peared bet­ter dis­posed to await the ap­proach of their for­mi­da­ble an­tag­o­nists, within their works, than to re­sist the progress of their march, by em­u­lat­ing the suc­cess­ful ex­am­ple of the French at Fort du Quesne, and strik­ing a blow on their ad­vance.

After the first sur­prise of the in­tel­li­gence had a lit­tle abated, a ru­mor was spread through the en­trenched camp, which stretched along the mar­gin of the Hud­son, form­ing a chain of out­works to the body of the fort it­self, that a cho­sen de­tach­ment of fif­teen hun­dred men was to de­part, with the dawn, for Wil­liam Henry, the post at the north­ern ex­trem­ity of the portage. That which at first was only ru­mor, soon be­came cer­tainty, as or­ders passed from the quar­ters of the com­man­der-in-chief to the sev­eral corps he had se­lected for this ser­vice, to pre­pare for their speedy de­par­ture. All doubts as to the in­ten­tion of Webb now van­ished, and an hour or two of hur­ried foot­steps and anx­ious faces suc­ceeded. The novice in the mil­i­tary art flew from point to point, re­tard­ing his own prepa­ra­tions by the ex­cess of his vi­o­lent and some­what dis­tem­pered zeal; while the more prac­ticed vet­eran made his ar­range­ments with a de­lib­er­a­tion that scorned ev­ery ap­pear­ance of haste; though his sober lin­ea­ments and anx­ious eye suf­fi­ciently be­trayed that he had no very strong pro­fes­sional rel­ish for the, as yet, un­tried and dreaded war­fare of the wilder­ness. At length the sun set in a flood of glory, be­hind the dis­tant west­ern hills, and as dark­ness drew its veil around the se­cluded spot the sounds of prepa­ra­tion di­min­ished; the last light fi­nally dis­ap­peared from the log cabin of some of­fi­cer; the trees cast their deeper shad­ows over the mounds and the rip­pling stream, and a si­lence soon per­vaded the camp, as deep as that which reigned in the vast for­est by which it was en­vi­roned.

Ac­cord­ing to the or­ders of the pre­ced­ing night, the heavy sleep of the army was bro­ken by the rolling of the warn­ing drums, whose rat­tling echoes were heard is­su­ing, on the damp morn­ing air, out of ev­ery vista of the woods, just as day be­gan to draw the shaggy out­lines of some tall pines of the vicin­ity, on the open­ing bright­ness of a soft and cloud­less east­ern sky. In an in­stant the whole camp was in mo­tion; the mean­est sol­dier arous­ing from his lair to wit­ness the de­par­ture of his com­rades, and to share in the ex­cite­ment and in­ci­dents of the hour. The sim­ple ar­ray of the cho­sen band was soon com­pleted. While the reg­u­lar and trained hirelings of the king marched with haugh­ti­ness to the right of the line, the less pre­tend­ing colonists took their hum­bler po­si­tion on its left, with a docil­ity that long prac­tice had ren­dered easy. The scouts de­parted; strong guards pre­ceded and fol­lowed the lum­ber­ing ve­hi­cles that bore the bag­gage; and be­fore the gray light of the morn­ing was mel­lowed by the rays of the sun, the main body of the com­bat­ants wheeled into col­umn, and left the en­camp­ment with a show of high mil­i­tary bear­ing, that served to drown the slum­ber­ing ap­pre­hen­sions of many a novice, who was now about to make his first es­say in arms. While in view of their ad­mir­ing com­rades, the same proud front and or­dered ar­ray was ob­served, un­til the notes of their fifes grow­ing fainter in dis­tance, the for­est at length ap­peared to swal­low up the liv­ing mass which had slowly en­tered its bo­som.

The deep­est sounds of the re­tir­ing and in­vis­i­ble col­umn had ceased to be borne on the breeze to the lis­ten­ers, and the lat­est strag­gler had al­ready dis­ap­peared in pur­suit; but there still re­mained the signs of an­other de­par­ture, be­fore a log cabin of un­usual size and ac­com­mo­da­tions, in front of which those sen­tinels paced their rounds, who were known to guard the per­son of the English gen­eral. At this spot were gath­ered some half dozen horses, ca­parisoned in a man­ner which showed that two, at least, were des­tined to bear the per­sons of fe­males, of a rank that it was not usual to meet so far in the wilds of the coun­try. A third wore trap­pings and arms of an of­fi­cer of the staff; while the rest, from the plain­ness of the hous­ings, and the trav­el­ing mails with which they were en­cum­bered, were ev­i­dently fit­ted for the re­cep­tion of as many me­nials, who were, seem­ingly, al­ready wait­ing the plea­sure of those they served. At a re­spect­ful dis­tance from this un­usual show, were gath­ered divers groups of cu­ri­ous idlers; some ad­mir­ing the blood and bone of the high-met­tled mil­i­tary charger, and oth­ers gaz­ing at the prepa­ra­tions, with the dull won­der of vul­gar cu­rios­ity. There was one man, how­ever, who, by his coun­te­nance and ac­tions, formed a marked ex­cep­tion to those who com­posed the lat­ter class of spec­ta­tors, be­ing nei­ther idle, nor seem­ingly very ig­no­rant.

The per­son of this in­di­vid­ual was to the last de­gree un­gainly, with­out be­ing in any par­tic­u­lar man­ner de­formed. He had all the bones and joints of other men, with­out any of their pro­por­tions. Erect, his stature sur­passed that of his fel­lows; though seated, he ap­peared re­duced within the or­di­nary lim­its of the race. The same con­tra­ri­ety in his mem­bers seemed to ex­ist through­out the whole man. His head was large; his shoul­ders nar­row; his arms long and dan­gling; while his hands were small, if not del­i­cate. His legs and thighs were thin, nearly to ema­ci­a­tion, but of ex­tra­or­di­nary length; and his knees would have been con­sid­ered tremen­dous, had they not been out­done by the broader foun­da­tions on which this false su­per­struc­ture of blended hu­man or­ders was so pro­fanely reared. The ill-as­sorted and in­ju­di­cious at­tire of the in­di­vid­ual only served to ren­der his awk­ward­ness more con­spic­u­ous. A sky-blue coat, with short and broad skirts and low cape, ex­posed a long, thin neck, and longer and thin­ner legs, to the worst an­i­mad­ver­sions of the evil-dis­posed. His nether gar­ment was a yel­low nan­keen, closely fit­ted to the shape, and tied at his bunches of knees by large knots of white rib­bon, a good deal sul­lied by use. Clouded cot­ton stock­ings, and shoes, on one of the lat­ter of which was a plated spur, com­pleted the cos­tume of the lower ex­trem­ity of this fig­ure, no curve or an­gle of which was con­cealed, but, on the other hand, stu­diously ex­hib­ited, through the van­ity or sim­plic­ity of its owner.

From be­neath the flap of an enor­mous pocket of a soiled vest of em­bossed silk, heav­ily or­na­mented with tar­nished sil­ver lace, pro­jected an in­stru­ment, which, from be­ing seen in such mar­tial com­pany, might have been eas­ily mis­taken for some mis­chievous and un­known im­ple­ment of war. Small as it was, this un­com­mon en­gine had ex­cited the cu­rios­ity of most of the Euro­peans in the camp, though sev­eral of the provin­cials were seen to han­dle it, not only with­out fear, but with the ut­most fa­mil­iar­ity. A large, civil cocked hat, like those worn by cler­gy­men within the last thirty years, sur­mounted the whole, fur­nish­ing dig­nity to a good-na­tured and some­what va­cant coun­te­nance, that ap­par­ently needed such ar­ti­fi­cial aid, to sup­port the grav­ity of some high and ex­tra­or­di­nary trust.

While the com­mon herd stood aloof, in def­er­ence to the quar­ters of Webb, the fig­ure we have de­scribed stalked into the cen­ter of the do­mes­tics, freely ex­press­ing his cen­sures or com­men­da­tions on the mer­its of the horses, as by chance they dis­pleased or sat­is­fied his judg­ment.

“This beast, I rather con­clude, friend, is not of home rais­ing, but is from for­eign lands, or per­haps from the lit­tle is­land it­self over the blue wa­ter?” he said, in a voice as re­mark­able for the soft­ness and sweet­ness of its tones, as was his per­son for its rare pro­por­tions; “I may speak of these things, and be no brag­gart; for I have been down at both havens; that which is sit­u­ate at the mouth of Thames, and is named af­ter the cap­i­tal of Old Eng­land, and that which is called ‘Haven,’ with the ad­di­tion of the word ‘New’; and have seen the scows and brig­an­tines col­lect­ing their droves, like the gath­er­ing to the ark, be­ing out­ward bound to the Is­land of Ja­maica, for the pur­pose of barter and traf­fic in four-footed an­i­mals; but never be­fore have I be­held a beast which ver­i­fied the true scrip­ture warhorse like this: ‘He paweth in the val­ley, and re­joiceth in his strength; he goeth on to meet the armed men. He saith among the trum­pets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the bat­tle afar off, the thun­der of the cap­tains, and the shout­ing.’ It would seem that the stock of the horse of Is­rael had de­scended to our own time; would it not, friend?”

Re­ceiv­ing no re­ply to this ex­tra­or­di­nary ap­peal, which in truth, as it was de­liv­ered with the vigor of full and sonorous tones, mer­ited some sort of no­tice, he who had thus sung forth the lan­guage of the holy book turned to the silent fig­ure to whom he had un­wit­tingly ad­dressed him­self, and found a new and more pow­er­ful sub­ject of ad­mi­ra­tion in the ob­ject that en­coun­tered his gaze. His eyes fell on the still, up­right, and rigid form of the “In­dian run­ner,” who had borne to the camp the un­wel­come tid­ings of the pre­ced­ing evening. Although in a state of per­fect re­pose, and ap­par­ently dis­re­gard­ing, with char­ac­ter­is­tic sto­icism, the ex­cite­ment and bus­tle around him, there was a sullen fierce­ness min­gled with the quiet of the sav­age, that was likely to ar­rest the at­ten­tion of much more ex­pe­ri­enced eyes than those which now scanned him, in un­con­cealed amaze­ment. The na­tive bore both the tom­a­hawk and knife of his tribe; and yet his ap­pear­ance was not al­to­gether that of a war­rior. On the con­trary, there was an air of ne­glect about his per­son, like that which might have pro­ceeded from great and re­cent ex­er­tion, which he had not yet found leisure to re­pair. The col­ors of the war-paint had blended in dark con­fu­sion about his fierce coun­te­nance, and ren­dered his swarthy lin­ea­ments still more sav­age and re­pul­sive than if art had at­tempted an ef­fect which had been thus pro­duced by chance. His eye, alone, which glis­tened like a fiery star amid low­er­ing clouds, was to be seen in its state of na­tive wild­ness. For a sin­gle in­stant his search­ing and yet wary glance met the won­der­ing look of the other, and then chang­ing its di­rec­tion, partly in cun­ning, and partly in dis­dain, it re­mained fixed, as if pen­e­trat­ing the dis­tant air.

It is im­pos­si­ble to say what un­looked-for re­mark this short and silent com­mu­ni­ca­tion, be­tween two such sin­gu­lar men, might have elicited from the white man, had not his ac­tive cu­rios­ity been again drawn to other ob­jects. A gen­eral move­ment among the do­mes­tics, and a low sound of gen­tle voices, an­nounced the ap­proach of those whose pres­ence alone was wanted to en­able the cav­al­cade to move. The sim­ple ad­mirer of the warhorse in­stantly fell back to a low, gaunt, switch-tailed mare, that was un­con­sciously glean­ing the faded herbage of the camp nigh by; where, lean­ing with one el­bow on the blan­ket that con­cealed an apol­ogy for a sad­dle, he be­came a spec­ta­tor of the de­par­ture, while a foal was qui­etly mak­ing its morn­ing repast, on the op­po­site side of the same an­i­mal.

A young man, in the dress of an of­fi­cer, con­ducted to their steeds two fe­males, who, as it was ap­par­ent by their dresses, were pre­pared to en­counter the fa­tigues of a jour­ney in the woods. One, and she was the more ju­ve­nile in her ap­pear­ance, though both were young, per­mit­ted glimpses of her daz­zling com­plex­ion, fair golden hair, and bright blue eyes, to be caught, as she art­lessly suf­fered the morn­ing air to blow aside the green veil which de­scended low from her beaver.

The flush which still lin­gered above the pines in the west­ern sky was not more bright nor del­i­cate than the bloom on her cheek; nor was the open­ing day more cheer­ing than the an­i­mated smile which she be­stowed on the youth, as he as­sisted her into the sad­dle. The other, who ap­peared to share equally in the at­ten­tion of the young of­fi­cer, con­cealed her charms from the gaze of the sol­diery with a care that seemed bet­ter fit­ted to the ex­pe­ri­ence of four or five ad­di­tional years. It could be seen, how­ever, that her per­son, though molded with the same ex­quis­ite pro­por­tions, of which none of the graces were lost by the trav­el­ing dress she wore, was rather fuller and more ma­ture than that of her com­pan­ion.

No sooner were these fe­males seated, than their at­ten­dant sprang lightly into the sad­dle of the warhorse, when the whole three bowed to Webb, who in cour­tesy, awaited their part­ing on the thresh­old of his cabin and turn­ing their horses’ heads, they pro­ceeded at a slow am­ble, fol­lowed by their train, to­ward the north­ern en­trance of the en­camp­ment. As they tra­versed that short dis­tance, not a voice was heard among them; but a slight ex­cla­ma­tion pro­ceeded from the younger of the fe­males, as the In­dian run­ner glided by her, un­ex­pect­edly, and led the way along the mil­i­tary road in her front. Though this sud­den and star­tling move­ment of the In­dian pro­duced no sound from the other, in the sur­prise her veil also was al­lowed to open its folds, and be­trayed an in­de­scrib­able look of pity, ad­mi­ra­tion, and hor­ror, as her dark eye fol­lowed the easy mo­tions of the sav­age. The tresses of this lady were shin­ing and black, like the plumage of the raven. Her com­plex­ion was not brown, but it rather ap­peared charged with the color of the rich blood, that seemed ready to burst its bounds. And yet there was nei­ther coarse­ness nor want of shad­ow­ing in a coun­te­nance that was exquisitely reg­u­lar, and dig­ni­fied and sur­pass­ingly beau­ti­ful. She smiled, as if in pity at her own mo­men­tary for­get­ful­ness, dis­cov­er­ing by the act a row of teeth that would have shamed the purest ivory; when, re­plac­ing the veil, she bowed her face, and rode in si­lence, like one whose thoughts were ab­stracted from the scene around her.

II

Sola, sola, wo ha, ho, sola!

Shake­speare

While one of the lovely be­ings we have so cur­so­rily pre­sented to the reader was thus lost in thought, the other quickly re­cov­ered from the alarm which in­duced the ex­cla­ma­tion, and, laugh­ing at her own weak­ness, she in­quired of the youth who rode by her side:

“Are such specters fre­quent in the woods, Hey­ward, or is this sight an es­pe­cial en­ter­tain­ment or­dered on our be­half? If the lat­ter, grat­i­tude must close our mouths; but if the for­mer, both Cora and I shall have need to draw largely on that stock of hered­i­tary courage which we boast, even be­fore we are made to en­counter the re­doubtable Mont­calm.”

“Yon In­dian is a ‘run­ner’ of the army; and, af­ter the fash­ion of his peo­ple, he may be ac­counted a hero,” re­turned the of­fi­cer. “He has vol­un­teered to guide us to the lake, by a path but lit­tle known, sooner than if we fol­lowed the tardy move­ments of the col­umn; and, by con­se­quence, more agree­ably.”

“I like him not,” said the lady, shud­der­ing, partly in as­sumed, yet more in real ter­ror. “You know him, Dun­can, or you would not trust your­self so freely to his keep­ing?”

“Say, rather, Alice, that I would not trust you. I do know him, or he would not have my con­fi­dence, and least of all at this mo­ment. He is said to be a Cana­dian too; and yet he served with our friends the Mo­hawks, who, as you know, are one of the six al­lied na­tions. He was brought among us, as I have heard, by some strange ac­ci­dent in which your fa­ther was in­ter­ested, and in which the sav­age was rigidly dealt by; but I for­get the idle tale, it is enough, that he is now our friend.”

“If he has been my fa­ther’s en­emy, I like him still less!” ex­claimed the now re­ally anx­ious girl. “Will you not speak to him, Ma­jor Hey­ward, that I may hear his tones? Fool­ish though it may be, you have of­ten heard me avow my faith in the tones of the hu­man voice!”

“It would be in vain; and an­swered, most prob­a­bly, by an ejac­u­la­tion. Though he may un­der­stand it, he af­fects, like most of his peo­ple, to be ig­no­rant of the English; and least of all will he con­de­scend to speak it, now that the war de­mands the ut­most ex­er­cise of his dig­nity. But he stops; the pri­vate path by which we are to jour­ney is, doubt­less, at hand.”

The con­jec­ture of Ma­jor Hey­ward was true. When they reached the spot where the In­dian stood, point­ing into the thicket that fringed the mil­i­tary road; a nar­row and blind path, which might, with some lit­tle in­con­ve­nience, re­ceive one per­son at a time, be­came vis­i­ble.

“Here, then, lies our way,” said the young man, in a low voice. “Man­i­fest no dis­trust, or you may in­vite the dan­ger you ap­pear to ap­pre­hend.”

“Cora, what think you?” asked the re­luc­tant fair one. “If we jour­ney with the troops, though we may find their pres­ence irk­some, shall we not feel bet­ter as­sur­ance of our safety?”

“Be­ing lit­tle ac­cus­tomed to the prac­tices of the sav­ages, Alice, you mis­take the place of real dan­ger,” said Hey­ward. “If en­e­mies have reached the portage at all, a thing by no means prob­a­ble, as our scouts are abroad, they will surely be found skirt­ing the col­umn, where scalps abound the most. The route of the de­tach­ment is known, while ours, hav­ing been de­ter­mined within the hour, must still be se­cret.”

“Should we dis­trust the man be­cause his man­ners are not our man­ners, and that his skin is dark?” coldly asked Cora.

Alice hes­i­tated no longer; but giv­ing her Nar­ran­gansett3 a smart cut of the whip, she was the first to dash aside the slight branches of the bushes, and to fol­low the run­ner along the dark and tan­gled path­way. The young man re­garded the last speaker in open ad­mi­ra­tion, and even per­mit­ted her fairer, though cer­tainly not more beau­ti­ful com­pan­ion, to pro­ceed unat­tended, while he sed­u­lously opened the way him­self for the pas­sage of her who has been called Cora. It would seem that the do­mes­tics had been pre­vi­ously in­structed; for, in­stead of pen­e­trat­ing the thicket, they fol­lowed the route of the col­umn; a mea­sure which Hey­ward stated had been dic­tated by the sagac­ity of their guide, in or­der to di­min­ish the marks of their trail, if, haply, the Cana­dian sav­ages should be lurk­ing so far in ad­vance of their army. For many min­utes the in­tri­cacy of the route ad­mit­ted of no fur­ther di­a­logue; af­ter which they emerged from the broad bor­der of un­der­brush which grew along the line of the high­way, and en­tered un­der the high but dark arches of the for­est. Here their progress was less in­ter­rupted; and the in­stant the guide per­ceived that the fe­males could com­mand their steeds, he moved on, at a pace be­tween a trot and a walk, and at a rate which kept the sure­footed and pe­cu­liar an­i­mals they rode at a fast yet easy am­ble. The youth had turned to speak to the dark-eyed Cora, when the dis­tant sound of horses hoofs, clat­ter­ing over the roots of the bro­ken way in his rear, caused him to check his charger; and, as his com­pan­ions drew their reins at the same in­stant, the whole party came to a halt, in or­der to ob­tain an ex­pla­na­tion of the un­looked-for in­ter­rup­tion.

In a few mo­ments a colt was seen glid­ing, like a fal­low deer, among the straight trunks of the pines; and, in an­other in­stant, the per­son of the un­gainly man, de­scribed in the pre­ced­ing chap­ter, came into view, with as much ra­pid­ity as he could ex­cite his mea­ger beast to en­dure with­out com­ing to an open rup­ture. Un­til now this per­son­age had es­caped the ob­ser­va­tion of the trav­el­ers. If he pos­sessed the power to ar­rest any wan­der­ing eye when ex­hibit­ing the glo­ries of his al­ti­tude on foot, his eques­trian graces were still more likely to at­tract at­ten­tion.

Notwith­stand­ing a con­stant ap­pli­ca­tion of his one armed heel to the flanks of the mare, the most con­firmed gait that he could es­tab­lish was a Can­ter­bury gal­lop with the hind legs, in which those more for­ward as­sisted for doubt­ful mo­ments, though gen­er­ally con­tent to main­tain a lop­ing trot. Per­haps the ra­pid­ity of the changes from one of these paces to the other cre­ated an op­ti­cal il­lu­sion, which might thus mag­nify the pow­ers of the beast; for it is cer­tain that Hey­ward, who pos­sessed a true eye for the mer­its of a horse, was un­able, with his ut­most in­ge­nu­ity, to de­cide by what sort of move­ment his pur­suer worked his sin­u­ous way on his foot­steps with such per­se­ver­ing hardi­hood.

The in­dus­try and move­ments of the rider were not less re­mark­able than those of the rid­den. At each change in the evo­lu­tions of the lat­ter, the for­mer raised his tall per­son in the stir­rups; pro­duc­ing, in this man­ner, by the un­due elon­ga­tion of his legs, such sud­den growths and di­min­ish­ings of the stature, as baf­fled ev­ery con­jec­ture that might be made as to his di­men­sions. If to this be added the fact that, in con­se­quence of the ex parte ap­pli­ca­tion of the spur, one side of the mare ap­peared to jour­ney faster than the other; and that the ag­grieved flank was res­o­lutely in­di­cated by un­remit­ted flour­ishes of a bushy tail, we fin­ish the pic­ture of both horse and man.

The frown which had gath­ered around the hand­some, open, and manly brow of Hey­ward, grad­u­ally re­laxed, and his lips curled into a slight smile, as he re­garded the stranger. Alice made no very pow­er­ful ef­fort to con­trol her mer­ri­ment; and even the dark, thought­ful eye of Cora lighted with a hu­mor that it would seem, the habit, rather than the na­ture, of its mis­tress re­pressed.

“Seek you any here?” de­manded Hey­ward, when the other had ar­rived suf­fi­ciently nigh to abate his speed; “I trust you are no mes­sen­ger of evil tid­ings?”

“Even so,” replied the stranger, mak­ing dili­gent use of his tri­an­gu­lar cas­tor, to pro­duce a cir­cu­la­tion in the close air of the woods, and leav­ing his hear­ers in doubt to which of the young man’s ques­tions he re­sponded; when, how­ever, he had cooled his face, and re­cov­ered his breath, he con­tin­ued, “I hear you are rid­ing to Wil­liam Henry; as I am jour­ney­ing thith­er­ward my­self, I con­cluded good com­pany would seem con­sis­tent to the wishes of both par­ties.”

“You ap­pear to pos­sess the priv­i­lege of a cast­ing vote,” re­turned Hey­ward; “we are three, while you have con­sulted no one but your­self.”

“Even so. The first point to be ob­tained is to know one’s own mind. Once sure of that, and where women are con­cerned it is not easy, the next is, to act up to the de­ci­sion. I have en­deav­ored to do both, and here I am.”

“If you jour­ney to the lake, you have mis­taken your route,” said Hey­ward, haugh­tily; “the high­way thither is at least half a mile be­hind you.”

“Even so,” re­turned the stranger, noth­ing daunted by this cold re­cep­tion; “I have tar­ried at ‘Ed­ward’ a week, and I should be dumb not to have in­quired the road I was to jour­ney; and if dumb there would be an end to my call­ing.” After sim­per­ing in a small way, like one whose mod­esty pro­hib­ited a more open ex­pres­sion of his ad­mi­ra­tion of a wit­ti­cism that was per­fectly un­in­tel­li­gi­ble to his hear­ers, he con­tin­ued, “It is not pru­dent for any­one of my pro­fes­sion to be too fa­mil­iar with those he has to in­struct; for which rea­son I fol­low not the line of the army; be­sides which, I con­clude that a gen­tle­man of your char­ac­ter has the best judg­ment in mat­ters of way­far­ing; I have, there­fore, de­cided to join com­pany, in or­der that the ride may be made agree­able, and par­take of so­cial com­mu­nion.”

“A most ar­bi­trary, if not a hasty de­ci­sion!” ex­claimed Hey­ward, un­de­cided whether to give vent to his grow­ing anger, or to laugh in the other’s face. “But you speak of in­struc­tion, and of a pro­fes­sion; are you an ad­junct to the pro­vin­cial corps, as a mas­ter of the no­ble sci­ence of de­fense and of­fense; or, per­haps, you are one who draws lines and an­gles, un­der the pre­tense of ex­pound­ing the math­e­mat­ics?”

The stranger re­garded his in­ter­roga­tor a mo­ment in won­der; and then, los­ing ev­ery mark of self-sat­is­fac­tion in an ex­pres­sion of solemn hu­mil­ity, he an­swered:

“Of of­fense, I hope there is none, to ei­ther party: of de­fense, I make none—by God’s good mercy, hav­ing com­mit­ted no pal­pa­ble sin since last en­treat­ing his par­don­ing grace. I un­der­stand not your al­lu­sions about lines and an­gles; and I leave ex­pound­ing to those who have been called and set apart for that holy of­fice. I lay claim to no higher gift than a small in­sight into the glo­ri­ous art of pe­ti­tion­ing and thanks­giv­ing, as prac­ticed in psalmody.”

“The man is, most man­i­festly, a dis­ci­ple of Apollo,” cried the amused Alice, “and I take him un­der my own es­pe­cial pro­tec­tion. Nay, throw aside that frown, Hey­ward, and in pity to my long­ing ears, suf­fer him to jour­ney in our train. Be­sides,” she added, in a low and hur­ried voice, cast­ing a glance at the dis­tant Cora, who slowly fol­lowed the foot­steps of their silent, but sullen guide, “it may be a friend added to our strength, in time of need.”

“Think you, Alice, that I would trust those I love by this se­cret path, did I imag­ine such need could hap­pen?”

“Nay, nay, I think not of it now; but this strange man amuses me; and if he ‘hath mu­sic in his soul,’ let us not churl­ishly re­ject his com­pany.” She pointed per­sua­sively along the path with her rid­ing whip, while their eyes met in a look which the young man lin­gered a mo­ment to pro­long; then, yield­ing to her gen­tle in­flu­ence, he clapped his spurs into his charger, and in a few bounds was again at the side of Cora.

“I am glad to en­counter thee, friend,” con­tin­ued the maiden, wav­ing her hand to the stranger to pro­ceed, as she urged her Nar­ra­gansett to re­new its am­ble. “Par­tial rel­a­tives have al­most per­suaded me that I am not en­tirely worth­less in a duet my­self; and we may en­liven our way­far­ing by in­dulging in our fa­vorite pur­suit. It might be of sig­nal ad­van­tage to one, ig­no­rant as I, to hear the opin­ions and ex­pe­ri­ence of a mas­ter in the art.”

“It is re­fresh­ing both to the spir­its and to the body to in­dulge in psalmody, in be­fit­ting sea­sons,” re­turned the mas­ter of song, un­hesi­tat­ingly com­ply­ing with her in­ti­ma­tion to fol­low; “and noth­ing would re­lieve the mind more than such a con­sol­ing com­mu­nion. But four parts are al­to­gether nec­es­sary to the per­fec­tion of melody. You have all the man­i­fes­ta­tions of a soft and rich tre­ble; I can, by es­pe­cial aid, carry a full tenor to the high­est let­ter; but we lack counter and bass! Yon of­fi­cer of the king, who hes­i­tated to ad­mit me to his com­pany, might fill the lat­ter, if one may judge from the in­to­na­tions of his voice in com­mon di­a­logue.”

“Judge not too rashly from hasty and de­cep­tive ap­pear­ances,” said the lady, smil­ing; “though Ma­jor Hey­ward can as­sume such deep notes on oc­ca­sion, be­lieve me, his nat­u­ral tones are bet­ter fit­ted for a mel­low tenor than the bass you heard.”

“Is he, then, much prac­ticed in the art of psalmody?” de­manded her sim­ple com­pan­ion.

Alice felt dis­posed to laugh, though she suc­ceeded in sup­press­ing her mer­ri­ment, ere she an­swered:

“I ap­pre­hend that he is rather ad­dicted to pro­fane song. The chances of a sol­dier’s life are but lit­tle fit­ted for the en­cour­age­ment of more sober in­cli­na­tions.”

“Man’s voice is given to him, like his other tal­ents, to be used, and not to be abused. None can say they have ever known me to ne­glect my gifts! I am thank­ful that, though my boy­hood may be said to have been set apart, like the youth of the royal David, for the pur­poses of mu­sic, no syl­la­ble of rude verse has ever pro­faned my lips.”

“You have, then, lim­ited your ef­forts to sa­cred song?”

“Even so. As the psalms of David ex­ceed all other lan­guage, so does the psalmody that has been fit­ted to them by the di­vines and sages of the land, sur­pass all vain po­etry. Hap­pily, I may say that I ut­ter noth­ing but the thoughts and the wishes of the King of Is­rael him­self; for though the times may call for some slight changes, yet does this ver­sion which we use in the colonies of New Eng­land so much ex­ceed all other ver­sions, that, by its rich­ness, its ex­act­ness, and its spir­i­tual sim­plic­ity, it ap­proa­cheth, as near as may be, to the great work of the in­spired writer. I never abide in any place, sleep­ing or wak­ing, with­out an ex­am­ple of this gifted work. ’Tis the six-and-twen­ti­eth edi­tion, pro­mul­gated at Bos­ton, Anno Do­mini 1744; and is en­ti­tled, ‘The Psalms, Hymns, and Spir­i­tual Songs of the Old and New Tes­ta­ments; faith­fully trans­lated into English Me­tre, for the Use, Ed­i­fi­ca­tion, and Com­fort of the Saints, in Public and Pri­vate, es­pe­cially in New Eng­land.’ ”

Dur­ing this eu­logium on the rare pro­duc­tion of his na­tive po­ets, the stranger had drawn the book from his pocket, and fit­ting a pair of iron-rimmed spec­ta­cles to his nose, opened the vol­ume with a care and ven­er­a­tion suited to its sa­cred pur­poses. Then, with­out cir­cum­lo­cu­tion or apol­ogy, first pro­nounced the word “Stan­dish,” and plac­ing the un­known en­gine, al­ready de­scribed, to his mouth, from which he drew a high, shrill sound, that was fol­lowed by an oc­tave be­low, from his own voice, he com­menced singing the fol­low­ing words, in full, sweet, and melo­di­ous tones, that set the mu­sic, the po­etry, and even the un­easy mo­tion of his ill-trained beast at de­fi­ance:

“How good it is, O see,
And how it pleaseth well,
To­gether e’en in unity,
For brethren so to dwell.
It’s like the choice oint­ment,
From the head to the beard did go;
Down Aaron’s head, that down­ward went
His gar­ment’s skirts unto.”

The de­liv­ery of these skill­ful rhymes was ac­com­pa­nied, on the part of the stranger, by a reg­u­lar rise and fall of his right hand, which ter­mi­nated at the de­scent, by suf­fer­ing the fin­gers to dwell a mo­ment on the leaves of the lit­tle vol­ume; and on the as­cent, by such a flour­ish of the mem­ber as none but the ini­ti­ated may ever hope to im­i­tate. It would seem long prac­tice had ren­dered this man­ual ac­com­pa­ni­ment nec­es­sary; for it did not cease un­til the prepo­si­tion which the poet had se­lected for the close of his verse had been duly de­liv­ered like a word of two syl­la­bles.

Such an in­no­va­tion on the si­lence and re­tire­ment of the for­est could not fail to en­list the ears of those who jour­neyed at so short a dis­tance in ad­vance. The In­dian mut­tered a few words in bro­ken English to Hey­ward, who, in his turn, spoke to the stranger; at once in­ter­rupt­ing, and, for the time, clos­ing his mu­si­cal ef­forts.

“Though we are not in dan­ger, com­mon pru­dence would teach us to jour­ney through this wilder­ness in as quiet a man­ner as pos­si­ble. You will then, par­don me, Alice, should I di­min­ish your en­joy­ments, by re­quest­ing this gen­tle­man to post­pone his chant un­til a safer op­por­tu­nity.”

“You will di­min­ish them, in­deed,” re­turned the arch girl; “for never did I hear a more un­wor­thy con­junc­tion of ex­e­cu­tion and lan­guage than that to which I have been lis­ten­ing; and I was far gone in a learned in­quiry into the causes of such an un­fit­ness be­tween sound and sense, when you broke the charm of my mus­ings by that bass of yours, Dun­can!”

“I know not what you call my bass,” said Hey­ward, piqued at her re­mark, “but I know that your safety, and that of Cora, is far dearer to me than could be any or­ches­tra of Han­del’s mu­sic.” He paused and turned his head quickly to­ward a thicket, and then bent his eyes sus­pi­ciously on their guide, who con­tin­ued his steady pace, in undis­turbed grav­ity. The young man smiled to him­self, for he be­lieved he had mis­taken some shin­ing berry of the woods for the glis­ten­ing eye­balls of a prowl­ing sav­age, and he rode for­ward, con­tin­u­ing the con­ver­sa­tion which had been in­ter­rupted by the pass­ing thought.

Ma­jor Hey­ward was mis­taken only in suf­fer­ing his youth­ful and gen­er­ous pride to sup­press his ac­tive watch­ful­ness. The cav­al­cade had not long passed, be­fore the branches of the bushes that formed the thicket were cau­tiously moved asun­der, and a hu­man vis­age, as fiercely wild as sav­age art and un­bri­dled pas­sions could make it, peered out on the re­tir­ing foot­steps of the trav­el­ers. A gleam of ex­ul­ta­tion shot across the darkly-painted lin­ea­ments of the in­hab­i­tant of the for­est, as he traced the route of his in­tended vic­tims, who rode un­con­sciously on­ward, the light and grace­ful forms of the fe­males wav­ing among the trees, in the cur­va­tures of their path, fol­lowed at each bend by the manly fig­ure of Hey­ward, un­til, fi­nally, the shape­less per­son of the singing mas­ter was con­cealed be­hind the num­ber­less trunks of trees, that rose, in dark lines, in the in­ter­me­di­ate space.

III

Be­fore these fields were shorn and till’d,
Full to the brim our rivers flow’d;
The melody of wa­ters fill’d
The fresh and bound­less wood;
And tor­rents dash’d, and rivulets play’d,
And foun­tains spouted in the shade.

Bryant

Leav­ing the un­sus­pect­ing Hey­ward and his con­fid­ing com­pan­ions to pen­e­trate still deeper into a for­est that con­tained such treach­er­ous in­mates, we must use an au­thor’s priv­i­lege, and shift the scene a few miles to the west­ward of the place where we have last seen them.

On that day, two men were lin­ger­ing on the banks of a small but rapid stream, within an hour’s jour­ney of the en­camp­ment of Webb, like those who awaited the ap­pear­ance of an ab­sent per­son, or the ap­proach of some ex­pected event. The vast canopy of woods spread it­self to the mar­gin of the river, over­hang­ing the wa­ter, and shad­ow­ing its dark cur­rent with a deeper hue. The rays of the sun were be­gin­ning to grow less fierce, and the in­tense heat of the day was less­ened, as the cooler va­pors of the springs and foun­tains rose above their leafy beds, and rested in the at­mos­phere. Still that breath­ing si­lence, which marks the drowsy sul­tri­ness of an Amer­i­can land­scape in July, per­vaded the se­cluded spot, in­ter­rupted only by the low voices of the men, the oc­ca­sional and lazy tap of a wood­pecker, the dis­cor­dant cry of some gaudy jay, or a swelling on the ear, from the dull roar of a dis­tant wa­ter­fall. Th­ese fee­ble and bro­ken sounds were, how­ever, too fa­mil­iar to the foresters to draw their at­ten­tion from the more in­ter­est­ing mat­ter of their di­a­logue. While one of these loi­ter­ers showed the red skin and wild ac­cou­ter­ments of a na­tive of the woods, the other ex­hib­ited, through the mask of his rude and nearly sav­age equip­ments, the brighter, though sun­burned and long-faced com­plex­ion of one who might claim de­scent from a Euro­pean parent­age. The for­mer was seated on the end of a mossy log, in a pos­ture that per­mit­ted him to heighten the ef­fect of his earnest lan­guage, by the calm but ex­pres­sive ges­tures of an In­dian en­gaged in de­bate. His body, which was nearly naked, pre­sented a ter­rific em­blem of death, drawn in in­ter­min­gled col­ors of white and black. His closely-shaved head, on which no other hair than the well-known and chival­rous scalp­ing tuft4 was pre­served, was with­out or­na­ment of any kind, with the ex­cep­tion of a soli­tary ea­gle’s plume, that crossed his crown, and de­pended over the left shoul­der. A tom­a­hawk and scalp­ing knife, of English man­u­fac­ture, were in his gir­dle; while a short mil­i­tary ri­fle, of that sort with which the pol­icy of the whites armed their sav­age al­lies, lay care­lessly across his bare and sinewy knee. The ex­panded chest, full formed limbs, and grave coun­te­nance of this war­rior, would de­note that he had reached the vigor of his days, though no symp­toms of de­cay ap­peared to have yet weak­ened his man­hood.

The frame of the white man, judg­ing by such parts as were not con­cealed by his clothes, was like that of one who had known hard­ships and ex­er­tion from his ear­li­est youth. His per­son, though mus­cu­lar, was rather at­ten­u­ated than full; but ev­ery nerve and mus­cle ap­peared strung and in­durated by un­remit­ted ex­po­sure and toil. He wore a hunt­ing shirt of for­est-green, fringed with faded yel­low,5 and a sum­mer cap of skins which had been shorn of their fur. He also bore a knife in a gir­dle of wampum, like that which con­fined the scanty gar­ments of the In­dian, but no tom­a­hawk. His moc­casins were or­na­mented af­ter the gay fash­ion of the na­tives, while the only part of his un­der dress which ap­peared be­low the hunt­ing-frock was a pair of buck­skin leg­gings, that laced at the sides, and which were gartered above the knees, with the sinews of a deer. A pouch and horn com­pleted his per­sonal ac­cou­ter­ments, though a ri­fle of great length,6 which the the­ory of the more in­ge­nious whites had taught them was the most dan­ger­ous of all firearms, leaned against a neigh­bor­ing sapling. The eye of the hunter, or scout, which­ever he might be, was small, quick, keen, and rest­less, rov­ing while he spoke, on ev­ery side of him, as if in quest of game, or dis­trust­ing the sud­den ap­proach of some lurk­ing en­emy. Notwith­stand­ing the symp­toms of ha­bit­ual sus­pi­cion, his coun­te­nance was not only with­out guile, but at the mo­ment at which he is in­tro­duced, it was charged with an ex­pres­sion of sturdy hon­esty.

“Even your tra­di­tions make the case in my fa­vor, Chin­gach­gook,” he said, speak­ing in the tongue which was known to all the na­tives who for­merly in­hab­ited the coun­try be­tween the Hud­son and the Po­tomac, and of which we shall give a free trans­la­tion for the ben­e­fit of the reader; en­deav­or­ing, at the same time, to pre­serve some of the pe­cu­liar­i­ties, both of the in­di­vid­ual and of the lan­guage. “Your fa­thers came from the set­ting sun, crossed the big river,7 fought the peo­ple of the coun­try, and took the land; and mine came from the red sky of the morn­ing, over the salt lake, and did their work much af­ter the fash­ion that had been set them by yours; then let God judge the mat­ter be­tween us, and friends spare their words!”

“My fa­thers fought with the naked red man!” re­turned the In­dian, sternly, in the same lan­guage. “Is there no dif­fer­ence, Hawk­eye, be­tween the stone-headed ar­row of the war­rior, and the leaden bul­let with which you kill?”

“There is rea­son in an In­dian, though na­ture has made him with a red skin!” said the white man, shak­ing his head like one on whom such an ap­peal to his jus­tice was not thrown away. For a mo­ment he ap­peared to be con­scious of hav­ing the worst of the ar­gu­ment, then, ral­ly­ing again, he an­swered the ob­jec­tion of his an­tag­o­nist in the best man­ner his lim­ited in­for­ma­tion would al­low:

“I am no scholar, and I care not who knows it; but, judg­ing from what I have seen, at deer chases and squir­rel hunts, of the sparks be­low, I should think a ri­fle in the hands of their grand­fa­thers was not so dan­ger­ous as a hick­ory bow and a good flint-head might be, if drawn with In­dian judg­ment, and sent by an In­dian eye.”

“You have the story told by your fa­thers,” re­turned the other, coldly wav­ing his hand. “What say your old men? Do they tell the young war­riors that the pale faces met the red men, painted for war and armed with the stone hatchet and wooden gun?”

“I am not a prej­u­diced man, nor one who vaunts him­self on his nat­u­ral priv­i­leges, though the worst en­emy I have on earth, and he is an Iro­quois, daren’t deny that I am gen­uine white,” the scout replied, sur­vey­ing, with se­cret sat­is­fac­tion, the faded color of his bony and sinewy hand, “and I am will­ing to own that my peo­ple have many ways, of which, as an hon­est man, I can’t ap­prove. It is one of their cus­toms to write in books what they have done and seen, in­stead of telling them in their vil­lages, where the lie can be given to the face of a cow­ardly boaster, and the brave sol­dier can call on his com­rades to wit­ness for the truth of his words. In con­se­quence of this bad fash­ion, a man, who is too con­sci­en­tious to mis­spend his days among the women, in learn­ing the names of black marks, may never hear of the deeds of his fa­thers, nor feel a pride in striv­ing to outdo them. For my­self, I con­clude the Bump­pos could shoot, for I have a nat­u­ral turn with a ri­fle, which must have been handed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, as, our holy com­mand­ments tell us, all good and evil gifts are be­stowed; though I should be loath to an­swer for other peo­ple in such a mat­ter. But ev­ery story has its two sides; so I ask you, Chin­gach­gook, what passed, ac­cord­ing to the tra­di­tions of the red men, when our fa­thers first met?”

A si­lence of a minute suc­ceeded, dur­ing which the In­dian sat mute; then, full of the dig­nity of his of­fice, he com­menced his brief tale, with a solem­nity that served to heighten its ap­pear­ance of truth.

“Lis­ten, Hawk­eye, and your ear shall drink no lie. ’Tis what my fa­thers have said, and what the Mo­hi­cans have done.” He hes­i­tated a sin­gle in­stant, and bend­ing a cau­tious glance to­ward his com­pan­ion, he con­tin­ued, in a man­ner that was di­vided be­tween in­ter­ro­ga­tion and as­ser­tion. “Does not this stream at our feet run to­ward the sum­mer, un­til its wa­ters grow salt, and the cur­rent flows up­ward?”

“It can’t be de­nied that your tra­di­tions tell you true in both these mat­ters,” said the white man; “for I have been there, and have seen them, though why wa­ter, which is so sweet in the shade, should be­come bit­ter in the sun, is an al­ter­ation for which I have never been able to ac­count.”

“And the cur­rent!” de­manded the In­dian, who ex­pected his re­ply with that sort of in­ter­est that a man feels in the con­fir­ma­tion of tes­ti­mony, at which he mar­vels even while he re­spects it; “the fa­thers of Chin­gach­gook have not lied!”

“The holy Bi­ble is not more true, and that is the truest thing in na­ture. They call this up­stream cur­rent the tide, which is a thing soon ex­plained, and clear enough. Six hours the wa­ters run in, and six hours they run out, and the rea­son is this: when there is higher wa­ter in the sea than in the river, they run in un­til the river gets to be high­est, and then it runs out again.”

“The wa­ters in the woods, and on the great lakes, run down­ward un­til they lie like my hand,” said the In­dian, stretch­ing the limb hor­i­zon­tally be­fore him, “and then they run no more.”

“No hon­est man will deny it,” said the scout, a lit­tle net­tled at the im­plied dis­trust of his ex­pla­na­tion of the mys­tery of the tides; “and I grant that it is true on the small scale, and where the land is level. But ev­ery­thing de­pends on what scale you look at things. Now, on the small scale, the ’arth is level; but on the large scale it is round. In this man­ner, pools and ponds, and even the great fresh­wa­ter lakes, may be stag­nant, as you and I both know they are, hav­ing seen them; but when you come to spread wa­ter over a great tract, like the sea, where the earth is round, how in rea­son can the wa­ter be quiet? You might as well ex­pect the river to lie still on the brink of those black rocks a mile above us, though your own ears tell you that it is tum­bling over them at this very mo­ment.”

If un­sat­is­fied by the phi­los­o­phy of his com­pan­ion, the In­dian was far too dig­ni­fied to be­tray his un­be­lief. He lis­tened like one who was con­vinced, and re­sumed his nar­ra­tive in his for­mer solemn man­ner.

“We came from the place where the sun is hid at night, over great plains where the buf­faloes live, un­til we reached the big river. There we fought the Al­ligewi, till the ground was red with their blood. From the banks of the big river to the shores of the salt lake, there was none to meet us. The Maquas fol­lowed at a dis­tance. We said the coun­try should be ours from the place where the wa­ter runs up no longer on this stream, to a river twenty sun’s jour­ney to­ward the sum­mer. We drove the Maquas into the woods with the bears. They only tasted salt at the licks; they drew no fish from the great lake; we threw them the bones.”

“All this I have heard and be­lieve,” said the white man, ob­serv­ing that the In­dian paused; “but it was long be­fore the English came into the coun­try.”

“A pine grew then where this chest­nut now stands. The first pale faces who came among us spoke no English. They came in a large ca­noe, when my fa­thers had buried the tom­a­hawk with the red men around them. Then, Hawk­eye,” he con­tin­ued, be­tray­ing his deep emo­tion, only by per­mit­ting his voice to fall to those low, gut­tural tones, which ren­der his lan­guage, as spo­ken at times, so very mu­si­cal; “then, Hawk­eye, we were one peo­ple, and we were happy. The salt lake gave us its fish, the wood its deer, and the air its birds. We took wives who bore us chil­dren; we wor­shipped the Great Spirit; and we kept the Maquas be­yond the sound of our songs of tri­umph.”

“Know you any­thing of your own fam­ily at that time?” de­manded the white. “But you are just a man, for an In­dian; and as I sup­pose you hold their gifts, your fa­thers must have been brave war­riors, and wise men at the coun­cil-fire.”

“My tribe is the grand­fa­ther of na­tions, but I am an un­mixed man. The blood of chiefs is in my veins, where it must stay for­ever. The Dutch landed, and gave my peo­ple the fire­wa­ter; they drank un­til the heav­ens and the earth seemed to meet, and they fool­ishly thought they had found the Great Spirit. Then they parted with their land. Foot by foot, they were driven back from the shores, un­til I, that am a chief and a Sag­amore, have never seen the sun shine but through the trees, and have never vis­ited the graves of my fa­thers.”

“Graves bring solemn feel­ings over the mind,” re­turned the scout, a good deal touched at the calm suf­fer­ing of his com­pan­ion; “and they of­ten aid a man in his good in­ten­tions; though, for my­self, I ex­pect to leave my own bones un­buried, to bleach in the woods, or to be torn asun­der by the wolves. But where are to be found those of your race who came to their kin in the Delaware coun­try, so many sum­mers since?”

“Where are the blos­soms of those sum­mers!—fallen, one by one; so all of my fam­ily de­parted, each in his turn, to the land of spir­its. I am on the hill­top and must go down into the val­ley; and when Un­cas fol­lows in my foot­steps there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sag­amores, for my boy is the last of the Mo­hi­cans.”

“Un­cas is here,” said an­other voice, in the same soft, gut­tural tones, near his el­bow; “who speaks to Un­cas?”

The white man loos­ened his knife in his leath­ern sheath, and made an in­vol­un­tary move­ment of the hand to­ward his ri­fle, at this sud­den in­ter­rup­tion; but the In­dian sat com­posed, and with­out turn­ing his head at the un­ex­pected sounds.

At the next in­stant, a youth­ful war­rior passed be­tween them, with a noise­less step, and seated him­self on the bank of the rapid stream. No ex­cla­ma­tion of sur­prise es­caped the fa­ther, nor was any ques­tion asked, or re­ply given, for sev­eral min­utes; each ap­pear­ing to await the mo­ment when he might speak, with­out be­tray­ing wom­an­ish cu­rios­ity or child­ish im­pa­tience. The white man seemed to take coun­sel from their cus­toms, and, re­lin­quish­ing his grasp of the ri­fle, he also re­mained silent and re­served. At length Chin­gach­gook turned his eyes slowly to­ward his son, and de­manded:

“Do the Maquas dare to leave the print of their moc­casins in these woods?”

“I have been on their trail,” replied the young In­dian, “and know that they num­ber as many as the fin­gers of my two hands; but they lie hid like cow­ards.”

“The thieves are out­ly­ing for scalps and plun­der,” said the white man, whom we shall call Hawk­eye, af­ter the man­ner of his com­pan­ions. “That busy French­man, Mont­calm, will send his spies into our very camp, but he will know what road we travel!”

“ ’Tis enough,” re­turned the fa­ther, glanc­ing his eye to­ward the set­ting sun; “they shall be driven like deer from their bushes. Hawk­eye, let us eat tonight, and show the Maquas that we are men to­mor­row.”

“I am as ready to do the one as the other; but to fight the Iro­quois ’tis nec­es­sary to find the skulk­ers; and to eat, ’tis nec­es­sary to get the game—talk of the devil and he will come; there is a pair of the big­gest antlers I have seen this sea­son, mov­ing the bushes be­low the hill! Now, Un­cas,” he con­tin­ued, in a half whis­per, and laugh­ing with a kind of in­ward sound, like one who had learned to be watch­ful, “I will bet my charger three times full of pow­der, against a foot of wampum, that I take him atwixt the eyes, and nearer to the right than to the left.”

“It can­not be!” said the young In­dian, spring­ing to his feet with youth­ful ea­ger­ness; “all but the tips of his horns are hid!”

“He’s a boy!” said the white man, shak­ing his head while he spoke, and ad­dress­ing the fa­ther. “Does he think when a hunter sees a part of the crea­tur’, he can’t tell where the rest of him should be!”

Ad­just­ing his ri­fle, he was about to make an ex­hi­bi­tion of that skill on which he so much val­ued him­self, when the war­rior struck up the piece with his hand, say­ing:

“Hawk­eye! will you fight the Maquas?”

“Th­ese In­di­ans know the na­ture of the woods, as it might be by in­stinct!” re­turned the scout, drop­ping his ri­fle, and turn­ing away like a man who was con­vinced of his er­ror. “I must leave the buck to your ar­row, Un­cas, or we may kill a deer for them thieves, the Iro­quois, to eat.”

The in­stant the fa­ther sec­onded this in­ti­ma­tion by an ex­pres­sive ges­ture of the hand, Un­cas threw him­self on the ground, and ap­proached the an­i­mal with wary move­ments. When within a few yards of the cover, he fit­ted an ar­row to his bow with the ut­most care, while the antlers moved, as if their owner snuffed an en­emy in the tainted air. In an­other mo­ment the twang of the cord was heard, a white streak was seen glanc­ing into the bushes, and the wounded buck plunged from the cover, to the very feet of his hid­den en­emy. Avoid­ing the horns of the in­fu­ri­ated an­i­mal, Un­cas darted to his side, and passed his knife across the throat, when bound­ing to the edge of the river it fell, dye­ing the wa­ters with its blood.

“ ’Twas done with In­dian skill,” said the scout laugh­ing in­wardly, but with vast sat­is­fac­tion; “and ’twas a pretty sight to be­hold! Though an ar­row is a near shot, and needs a knife to fin­ish the work.”

“Hugh!” ejac­u­lated his com­pan­ion, turn­ing quickly, like a hound who scented game.

“By the Lord, there is a drove of them!” ex­claimed the scout, whose eyes be­gan to glis­ten with the ar­dor of his usual oc­cu­pa­tion; “if they come within range of a bul­let I will drop one, though the whole Six Na­tions should be lurk­ing within sound! What do you hear, Chin­gach­gook? for to my ears the woods are dumb.”

“There is but one deer, and he is dead,” said the In­dian, bend­ing his body till his ear nearly touched the earth. “I hear the sounds of feet!”

“Per­haps the wolves have driven the buck to shel­ter, and are fol­low­ing on his trail.”

“No. The horses of white men are com­ing!” re­turned the other, rais­ing him­self with dig­nity, and re­sum­ing his seat on the log with his for­mer com­po­sure. “Hawk­eye, they are your broth­ers; speak to them.”

“That I will, and in English that the king needn’t be ashamed to an­swer,” re­turned the hunter, speak­ing in the lan­guage of which he boasted; “but I see noth­ing, nor do I hear the sounds of man or beast; ’tis strange that an In­dian should un­der­stand white sounds bet­ter than a man who, his very en­e­mies will own, has no cross in his blood, al­though he may have lived with the red skins long enough to be sus­pected! Ha! there goes some­thing like the crack­ing of a dry stick, too—now I hear the bushes move—yes, yes, there is a tram­pling that I mis­took for the falls—and—but here they come them­selves; God keep them from the Iro­quois!”

IV

Well go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove
Till I tor­ment thee for this in­jury.

Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream

The words were still in the mouth of the scout, when the leader of the party, whose ap­proach­ing foot­steps had caught the vig­i­lant ear of the In­dian, came openly into view. A beaten path, such as those made by the pe­ri­od­i­cal pas­sage of the deer, wound through a lit­tle glen at no great dis­tance, and struck the river at the point where the white man and his red com­pan­ions had posted them­selves. Along this track the trav­el­ers, who had pro­duced a sur­prise so un­usual in the depths of the for­est, ad­vanced slowly to­ward the hunter, who was in front of his as­so­ciates, in readi­ness to re­ceive them.

“Who comes?” de­manded the scout, throw­ing his ri­fle care­lessly across his left arm, and keep­ing the fore­fin­ger of his right hand on the trig­ger, though he avoided all ap­pear­ance of men­ace in the act. “Who comes hither, among the beasts and dan­gers of the wilder­ness?”

“Believ­ers in re­li­gion, and friends to the law and to the king,” re­turned he who rode fore­most. “Men who have jour­neyed since the ris­ing sun, in the shades of this for­est, with­out nour­ish­ment, and are sadly tired of their way­far­ing.”

“You are, then, lost,” in­ter­rupted the hunter, “and have found how help­less ’tis not to know whether to take the right hand or the left?”

“Even so; suck­ing babes are not more de­pen­dent on those who guide them than we who are of larger growth, and who may now be said to pos­sess the stature with­out the knowl­edge of men. Know you the dis­tance to a post of the crown called Wil­liam Henry?”

“Hoot!” shouted the scout, who did not spare his open laugh­ter, though in­stantly check­ing the dan­ger­ous sounds he in­dulged his mer­ri­ment at less risk of be­ing over­heard by any lurk­ing en­e­mies. “You are as much off the scent as a hound would be, with Hor­i­can atwixt him and the deer! Wil­liam Henry, man! if you are friends to the king and have busi­ness with the army, your way would be to fol­low the river down to Ed­ward, and lay the mat­ter be­fore Webb, who tar­ries there, in­stead of push­ing into the de­files, and driv­ing this saucy French­man back across Cham­plain, into his den again.”

Be­fore the stranger could make any re­ply to this un­ex­pected propo­si­tion, an­other horse­man dashed the bushes aside, and leaped his charger into the path­way, in front of his com­pan­ion.

“What, then, may be our dis­tance from Fort Ed­ward?” de­manded a new speaker; “the place you ad­vise us to seek we left this morn­ing, and our des­ti­na­tion is the head of the lake.”

“Then you must have lost your eye­sight afore los­ing your way, for the road across the portage is cut to a good two rods, and is as grand a path, I cal­cu­late, as any that runs into Lon­don, or even be­fore the palace of the king him­self.”

“We will not dis­pute con­cern­ing the ex­cel­lence of the pas­sage,” re­turned Hey­ward, smil­ing; for, as the reader has an­tic­i­pated, it was he. “It is enough, for the present, that we trusted to an In­dian guide to take us by a nearer, though blinder path, and that we are de­ceived in his knowl­edge. In plain words, we know not where we are.”

“An In­dian lost in the woods!” said the scout, shak­ing his head doubt­ingly; “When the sun is scorch­ing the tree tops, and the wa­ter cour­ses are full; when the moss on ev­ery beech he sees will tell him in what quar­ter the north star will shine at night. The woods are full of deer-paths which run to the streams and licks, places well known to ev­ery­body; nor have the geese done their flight to the Canada wa­ters al­to­gether! ’Tis strange that an In­dian should be lost atwixt Hor­i­can and the bend in the river! Is he a Mo­hawk?”

“Not by birth, though adopted in that tribe; I think his birth­place was far­ther north, and he is one of those you call a Huron.”

“Hugh!” ex­claimed the two com­pan­ions of the scout, who had con­tin­ued un­til this part of the di­a­logue, seated im­mov­able, and ap­par­ently in­dif­fer­ent to what passed, but who now sprang to their feet with an ac­tiv­ity and in­ter­est that had ev­i­dently got the bet­ter of their re­serve by sur­prise.

“A Huron!” re­peated the sturdy scout, once more shak­ing his head in open dis­trust; “they are a thievish race, nor do I care by whom they are adopted; you can never make any­thing of them but skulks and vagabonds. Since you trusted your­self to the care of one of that na­tion, I only won­der that you have not fallen in with more.”

“Of that there is lit­tle dan­ger, since Wil­liam Henry is so many miles in our front. You for­get that I have told you our guide is now a Mo­hawk, and that he serves with our forces as a friend.”

“And I tell you that he who is born a Mingo will die a Mingo,” re­turned the other pos­i­tively. “A Mo­hawk! No, give me a Delaware or a Mo­hi­can for hon­esty; and when they will fight, which they won’t all do, hav­ing suf­fered their cun­ning en­e­mies, the Maquas, to make them women—but when they will fight at all, look to a Delaware, or a Mo­hi­can, for a war­rior!”

“Enough of this,” said Hey­ward, im­pa­tiently; “I wish not to in­quire into the char­ac­ter of a man that I know, and to whom you must be a stranger. You have not yet an­swered my ques­tion; what is our dis­tance from the main army at Ed­ward?”

“It seems that may de­pend on who is your guide. One would think such a horse as that might get over a good deal of ground atwixt sunup and sun­down.”

“I wish no con­tention of idle words with you, friend,” said Hey­ward, curb­ing his dis­sat­is­fied man­ner, and speak­ing in a more gen­tle voice; “if you will tell me the dis­tance to Fort Ed­ward, and con­duct me thither, your la­bor shall not go with­out its re­ward.”

“And in so do­ing, how know I that I don’t guide an en­emy and a spy of Mont­calm, to the works of the army? It is not ev­ery man who can speak the English tongue that is an hon­est sub­ject.”

“If you serve with the troops, of whom I judge you to be a scout, you should know of such a reg­i­ment of the king as the Six­ti­eth.”

“The Six­ti­eth! you can tell me lit­tle of the Royal Amer­i­cans that I don’t know, though I do wear a hunt­ing-shirt in­stead of a scar­let jacket.”

“Well, then, among other things, you may know the name of its ma­jor?”

“Its ma­jor!” in­ter­rupted the hunter, el­e­vat­ing his body like one who was proud of his trust. “If there is a man in the coun­try who knows Ma­jor Eff­in­g­ham, he stands be­fore you.”

“It is a corps which has many ma­jors; the gen­tle­man you name is the se­nior, but I speak of the ju­nior of them all; he who com­mands the com­pa­nies in gar­ri­son at Wil­liam Henry.”

“Yes, yes, I have heard that a young gen­tle­man of vast riches, from one of the prov­inces far south, has got the place. He is over young, too, to hold such rank, and to be put above men whose heads are be­gin­ning to bleach; and yet they say he is a sol­dier in his knowl­edge, and a gal­lant gen­tle­man!”

“What­ever he may be, or how­ever he may be qual­i­fied for his rank, he now speaks to you and, of course, can be no en­emy to dread.”

The scout re­garded Hey­ward in sur­prise, and then lift­ing his cap, he an­swered, in a tone less con­fi­dent than be­fore—though still ex­press­ing doubt.

“I have heard a party was to leave the en­camp­ment this morn­ing for the lake shore?”

“You have heard the truth; but I pre­ferred a nearer route, trust­ing to the knowl­edge of the In­dian I men­tioned.”

“And he de­ceived you, and then de­serted?”

“Nei­ther, as I be­lieve; cer­tainly not the lat­ter, for he is to be found in the rear.”

“I should like to look at the crea­ture; if it is a true Iro­quois I can tell him by his knav­ish look, and by his paint,” said the scout; step­ping past the charger of Hey­ward, and en­ter­ing the path be­hind the mare of the singing mas­ter, whose foal had taken ad­van­tage of the halt to ex­act the ma­ter­nal con­tri­bu­tion. After shov­ing aside the bushes, and pro­ceed­ing a few paces, he en­coun­tered the fe­males, who awaited the re­sult of the con­fer­ence with anx­i­ety, and not en­tirely with­out ap­pre­hen­sion. Be­hind these, the run­ner leaned against a tree, where he stood the close ex­am­i­na­tion of the scout with an air un­moved, though with a look so dark and sav­age, that it might in it­self ex­cite fear. Sat­is­fied with his scru­tiny, the hunter soon left him. As he repassed the fe­males, he paused a mo­ment to gaze upon their beauty, an­swer­ing to the smile and nod of Alice with a look of open plea­sure. Thence he went to the side of the moth­erly an­i­mal, and spend­ing a minute in a fruit­less in­quiry into the char­ac­ter of her rider, he shook his head and re­turned to Hey­ward.

“A Mingo is a Mingo, and God hav­ing made him so, nei­ther the Mo­hawks nor any other tribe can al­ter him,” he said, when he had re­gained his for­mer po­si­tion. “If we were alone, and you would leave that no­ble horse at the mercy of the wolves tonight, I could show you the way to Ed­ward my­self, within an hour, for it lies only about an hour’s jour­ney hence; but with such ladies in your com­pany ’tis im­pos­si­ble!”

“And why? They are fa­tigued, but they are quite equal to a ride of a few more miles.”

“ ’Tis a nat­u­ral im­pos­si­bil­ity!” re­peated the scout; “I wouldn’t walk a mile in these woods af­ter night gets into them, in com­pany with that run­ner, for the best ri­fle in the colonies. They are full of out­ly­ing Iro­quois, and your mon­grel Mo­hawk knows where to find them too well to be my com­pan­ion.”

“Think you so?” said Hey­ward, lean­ing for­ward in the sad­dle, and drop­ping his voice nearly to a whis­per; “I con­fess I have not been with­out my own sus­pi­cions, though I have en­deav­ored to con­ceal them, and af­fected a con­fi­dence I have not al­ways felt, on ac­count of my com­pan­ions. It was be­cause I sus­pected him that I would fol­low no longer; mak­ing him, as you see, fol­low me.”

“I knew he was one of the cheats as soon as I laid eyes on him!” re­turned the scout, plac­ing a fin­ger on his nose, in sign of cau­tion.

“The thief is lean­ing against the foot of the sugar sapling, that you can see over them bushes; his right leg is in a line with the bark of the tree, and,” tap­ping his ri­fle, “I can take him from where I stand, be­tween the an­gle and the knee, with a sin­gle shot, putting an end to his tramp­ing through the woods, for at least a month to come. If I should go back to him, the cun­ning varmint would sus­pect some­thing, and be dodg­ing through the trees like a fright­ened deer.”

“It will not do. He may be in­no­cent, and I dis­like the act. Though, if I felt con­fi­dent of his treach­ery—”

“ ’Tis a safe thing to cal­cu­late on the knav­ery of an Iro­quois,” said the scout, throw­ing his ri­fle for­ward, by a sort of in­stinc­tive move­ment.

“Hold!” in­ter­rupted Hey­ward, “it will not do—we must think of some other scheme—and yet, I have much rea­son to be­lieve the ras­cal has de­ceived me.”

The hunter, who had al­ready aban­doned his in­ten­tion of maim­ing the run­ner, mused a mo­ment, and then made a ges­ture, which in­stantly brought his two red com­pan­ions to his side. They spoke to­gether earnestly in the Delaware lan­guage, though in an un­der­tone; and by the ges­tures of the white man, which were fre­quently di­rected to­wards the top of the sapling, it was ev­i­dent he pointed out the sit­u­a­tion of their hid­den en­emy. His com­pan­ions were not long in com­pre­hend­ing his wishes, and lay­ing aside their firearms, they parted, tak­ing op­po­site sides of the path, and bury­ing them­selves in the thicket, with such cau­tious move­ments, that their steps were in­audi­ble.

“Now, go you back,” said the hunter, speak­ing again to Hey­ward, “and hold the imp in talk; these Mo­hi­cans here will take him with­out break­ing his paint.”

“Nay,” said Hey­ward, proudly, “I will seize him my­self.”

“Hist! what could you do, mounted, against an In­dian in the bushes!”

“I will dis­mount.”

“And, think you, when he saw one of your feet out of the stir­rup, he would wait for the other to be free? Who­ever comes into the woods to deal with the na­tives, must use In­dian fash­ions, if he would wish to pros­per in his un­der­tak­ings. Go, then; talk openly to the mis­cre­ant, and seem to be­lieve him the truest friend you have on ’arth.”

Hey­ward pre­pared to com­ply, though with strong dis­gust at the na­ture of the of­fice he was com­pelled to ex­e­cute. Each mo­ment, how­ever, pressed upon him a con­vic­tion of the crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in which he had suf­fered his in­valu­able trust to be in­volved through his own con­fi­dence. The sun had al­ready dis­ap­peared, and the woods, sud­denly de­prived of his light,8 were as­sum­ing a dusky hue, which keenly re­minded him that the hour the sav­age usu­ally chose for his most bar­barous and re­morse­less acts of vengeance or hos­til­ity, was speed­ily draw­ing near. Stim­u­lated by ap­pre­hen­sion, he left the scout, who im­me­di­ately en­tered into a loud con­ver­sa­tion with the stranger that had so un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously en­listed him­self in the party of trav­el­ers that morn­ing. In pass­ing his gen­tler com­pan­ions Hey­ward ut­tered a few words of en­cour­age­ment, and was pleased to find that, though fa­tigued with the ex­er­cise of the day, they ap­peared to en­ter­tain no sus­pi­cion that their present em­bar­rass­ment was other than the re­sult of ac­ci­dent. Giv­ing them rea­son to be­lieve he was merely em­ployed in a con­sul­ta­tion con­cern­ing the fu­ture route, he spurred his charger, and drew the reins again when the an­i­mal had car­ried him within a few yards of the place where the sullen run­ner still stood, lean­ing against the tree.

“You may see, Magua,” he said, en­deav­or­ing to as­sume an air of free­dom and con­fi­dence, “that the night is clos­ing around us, and yet we are no nearer to Wil­liam Henry than when we left the en­camp­ment of Webb with the ris­ing sun.

“You have missed the way, nor have I been more for­tu­nate. But, hap­pily, we have fallen in with a hunter, he whom you hear talk­ing to the singer, that is ac­quainted with the deer­paths and by­ways of the woods, and who prom­ises to lead us to a place where we may rest se­curely till the morn­ing.”

The In­dian riv­eted his glow­ing eyes on Hey­ward as he asked, in his im­per­fect English, “Is he alone?”

“Alone!” hes­i­tat­ingly an­swered Hey­ward, to whom de­cep­tion was too new to be as­sumed with­out em­bar­rass­ment. “Oh! not alone, surely, Magua, for you know that we are with him.”

“Then Le Re­nard Subtil will go,” re­turned the run­ner, coolly rais­ing his lit­tle wal­let from the place where it had lain at his feet; “and the pale faces will see none but their own color.”

“Go! Whom call you Le Re­nard?”

“ ’Tis the name his Canada fa­thers have given to Magua,” re­turned the run­ner, with an air that man­i­fested his pride at the dis­tinc­tion. “Night is the same as day to Le Subtil, when Munro waits for him.”

“And what ac­count will Le Re­nard give the chief of Wil­liam Henry con­cern­ing his daugh­ters? Will he dare to tell the hot-blooded Scots­man that his chil­dren are left with­out a guide, though Magua promised to be one?”

“Though the gray head has a loud voice, and a long arm, Le Re­nard will not hear him, nor feel him, in the woods.”

“But what will the Mo­hawks say? They will make him pet­ti­coats, and bid him stay in the wig­wam with the women, for he is no longer to be trusted with the busi­ness of a man.”

“Le Subtil knows the path to the great lakes, and he can find the bones of his fa­thers,” was the an­swer of the un­moved run­ner.

“Enough, Magua,” said Hey­ward; “are we not friends? Why should there be bit­ter words be­tween us? Munro has promised you a gift for your ser­vices when per­formed, and I shall be your debtor for an­other. Rest your weary limbs, then, and open your wal­let to eat. We have a few mo­ments to spare; let us not waste them in talk like wran­gling women. When the ladies are re­freshed we will pro­ceed.”

“The pale faces make them­selves dogs to their women,” mut­tered the In­dian, in his na­tive lan­guage, “and when they want to eat, their war­riors must lay aside the tom­a­hawk to feed their lazi­ness.”

“What say you, Re­nard?”

“Le Subtil says it is good.”

The In­dian then fas­tened his eyes keenly on the open coun­te­nance of Hey­ward, but meet­ing his glance, he turned them quickly away, and seat­ing him­self de­lib­er­ately on the ground, he drew forth the rem­nant of some for­mer repast, and be­gan to eat, though not with­out first bend­ing his looks slowly and cau­tiously around him.

“This is well,” con­tin­ued Hey­ward; “and Le Re­nard will have strength and sight to find the path in the morn­ing”; he paused, for sounds like the snap­ping of a dried stick, and the rustling of leaves, rose from the ad­ja­cent bushes, but rec­ol­lect­ing him­self in­stantly, he con­tin­ued, “we must be mov­ing be­fore the sun is seen, or Mont­calm may lie in our path, and shut us out from the fortress.”

The hand of Magua dropped from his mouth to his side, and though his eyes were fas­tened on the ground, his head was turned aside, his nos­trils ex­panded, and his ears seemed even to stand more erect than usual, giv­ing to him the ap­pear­ance of a statue that was made to rep­re­sent in­tense at­ten­tion.

Hey­ward, who watched his move­ments with a vig­i­lant eye, care­lessly ex­tri­cated one of his feet from the stir­rup, while he passed a hand to­ward the bearskin cov­er­ing of his hol­sters.

Every ef­fort to de­tect the point most re­garded by the run­ner was com­pletely frus­trated by the tremu­lous glances of his or­gans, which seemed not to rest a sin­gle in­stant on any par­tic­u­lar ob­ject, and which, at the same time, could be hardly said to move. While he hes­i­tated how to pro­ceed, Le Subtil cau­tiously raised him­self to his feet, though with a mo­tion so slow and guarded, that not the slight­est noise was pro­duced by the change. Hey­ward felt it had now be­come in­cum­bent on him to act. Throw­ing his leg over the sad­dle, he dis­mounted, with a de­ter­mi­na­tion to ad­vance and seize his treach­er­ous com­pan­ion, trust­ing the re­sult to his own man­hood. In or­der, how­ever, to pre­vent un­nec­es­sary alarm, he still pre­served an air of calm­ness and friend­ship.

“Le Re­nard Subtil does not eat,” he said, us­ing the ap­pel­la­tion he had found most flat­ter­ing to the van­ity of the In­dian. “His corn is not well parched, and it seems dry. Let me ex­am­ine; per­haps some­thing may be found among my own pro­vi­sions that will help his ap­petite.”

Magua held out the wal­let to the prof­fer of the other. He even suf­fered their hands to meet, with­out be­tray­ing the least emo­tion, or vary­ing his riv­eted at­ti­tude of at­ten­tion. But when he felt the fin­gers of Hey­ward mov­ing gen­tly along his own naked arm, he struck up the limb of the young man, and, ut­ter­ing a pierc­ing cry, he darted be­neath it, and plunged, at a sin­gle bound, into the op­po­site thicket. At the next in­stant the form of Chin­gach­gook ap­peared from the bushes, look­ing like a specter in its paint, and glided across the path in swift pur­suit. Next fol­lowed the shout of Un­cas, when the woods were lighted by a sud­den flash, that was ac­com­pa­nied by the sharp re­port of the hunter’s ri­fle.

V

In such a night
Did This be fear­fully o’er­trip the dew;
And saw the lion’s shadow ere him­self.

Mer­chant of Venice

The sud­den­ness of the flight of his guide, and the wild cries of the pur­suers, caused Hey­ward to re­main fixed, for a few mo­ments, in in­ac­tive sur­prise. Then rec­ol­lect­ing the im­por­tance of se­cur­ing the fugi­tive, he dashed aside the sur­round­ing bushes, and pressed ea­gerly for­ward to lend his aid in the chase. Be­fore he had, how­ever, pro­ceeded a hun­dred yards, he met the three foresters al­ready re­turn­ing from their un­suc­cess­ful pur­suit.

“Why so soon dis­heart­ened!” he ex­claimed; “the scoundrel must be con­cealed be­hind some of these trees, and may yet be se­cured. We are not safe while he goes at large.”

“Would you set a cloud to chase the wind?” re­turned the dis­ap­pointed scout; “I heard the imp brush­ing over the dry leaves, like a black snake, and blink­ing a glimpse of him, just over ag’in yon big pine, I pulled as it might be on the scent; but ’twouldn’t do! and yet for a rea­son­ing aim, if any­body but my­self had touched the trig­ger, I should call it a quick sight; and I may be ac­counted to have ex­pe­ri­ence in these mat­ters, and one who ought to know. Look at this sumach; its leaves are red, though ev­ery­body knows the fruit is in the yel­low blos­som in the month of July!”

“ ’Tis the blood of Le Subtil! he is hurt, and may yet fall!”

“No, no,” re­turned the scout, in de­cided dis­ap­pro­ba­tion of this opin­ion, “I rubbed the bark off a limb, per­haps, but the crea­ture leaped the longer for it. A ri­fle bul­let acts on a run­ning an­i­mal, when it barks him, much the same as one of your spurs on a horse; that is, it quick­ens mo­tion, and puts life into the flesh, in­stead of tak­ing it away. But when it cuts the ragged hole, af­ter a bound or two, there is, com­monly, a stag­na­tion of fur­ther leap­ing, be it In­dian or be it deer!”

“We are four able bod­ies, to one wounded man!”

“Is life griev­ous to you?” in­ter­rupted the scout. “Yon­der red devil would draw you within swing of the tom­a­hawks of his com­rades, be­fore you were heated in the chase. It was an un­thought­ful act in a man who has so of­ten slept with the war-whoop ring­ing in the air, to let off his piece within sound of an am­bush­ment! But then it was a nat­u­ral temp­ta­tion! ’twas very nat­u­ral! Come, friends, let us move our sta­tion, and in such fash­ion, too, as will throw the cun­ning of a Mingo on a wrong scent, or our scalps will be dry­ing in the wind in front of Mont­calm’s mar­quee, ag’in this hour to­mor­row.”

This ap­palling dec­la­ra­tion, which the scout ut­tered with the cool as­sur­ance of a man who fully com­pre­hended, while he did not fear to face the dan­ger, served to re­mind Hey­ward of the im­por­tance of the charge with which he him­self had been in­trusted. Glanc­ing his eyes around, with a vain ef­fort to pierce the gloom that was thick­en­ing be­neath the leafy arches of the for­est, he felt as if, cut off from hu­man aid, his un­re­sist­ing com­pan­ions would soon lie at the en­tire mercy of those bar­barous en­e­mies, who, like beasts of prey, only waited till the gath­er­ing dark­ness might ren­der their blows more fa­tally cer­tain. His awak­ened imag­i­na­tion, de­luded by the de­cep­tive light, con­verted each wav­ing bush, or the frag­ment of some fallen tree, into hu­man forms, and twenty times he fan­cied he could dis­tin­guish the hor­rid vis­ages of his lurk­ing foes, peer­ing from their hid­ing places, in never ceas­ing watch­ful­ness of the move­ments of his party. Look­ing up­ward, he found that the thin fleecy clouds, which evening had painted on the blue sky, were al­ready los­ing their faintest tints of rose-color, while the imbed­ded stream, which glided past the spot where he stood, was to be traced only by the dark bound­ary of its wooded banks.

“What is to be done!” he said, feel­ing the ut­ter help­less­ness of doubt in such a press­ing strait; “desert me not, for God’s sake! re­main to de­fend those I es­cort, and freely name your own re­ward!”

His com­pan­ions, who con­versed apart in the lan­guage of their tribe, heeded not this sud­den and earnest ap­peal. Though their di­a­logue was main­tained in low and cau­tious sounds, but lit­tle above a whis­per, Hey­ward, who now ap­proached, could eas­ily dis­tin­guish the earnest tones of the younger war­rior from the more de­lib­er­ate speeches of his se­niors. It was ev­i­dent that they de­bated on the pro­pri­ety of some mea­sure, that nearly con­cerned the wel­fare of the trav­el­ers. Yield­ing to his pow­er­ful in­ter­est in the sub­ject, and im­pa­tient of a de­lay that seemed fraught with so much ad­di­tional dan­ger, Hey­ward drew still nigher to the dusky group, with an in­ten­tion of mak­ing his of­fers of com­pen­sa­tion more def­i­nite, when the white man, mo­tion­ing with his hand, as if he con­ceded the dis­puted point, turned away, say­ing in a sort of so­lil­o­quy, and in the English tongue:

“Un­cas is right! it would not be the act of men to leave such harm­less things to their fate, even though it breaks up the har­bor­ing place for­ever. If you would save these ten­der blos­soms from the fangs of the worst of ser­pents, gen­tle­man, you have nei­ther time to lose nor res­o­lu­tion to throw away!”

“How can such a wish be doubted! Have I not al­ready of­fered—”

“Of­fer your prayers to Him who can give us wis­dom to cir­cum­vent the cun­ning of the dev­ils who fill these woods,” calmly in­ter­rupted the scout, “but spare your of­fers of money, which nei­ther you may live to re­al­ize, nor I to profit by. Th­ese Mo­hi­cans and I will do what man’s thoughts can in­vent, to keep such flow­ers, which, though so sweet, were never made for the wilder­ness, from harm, and that with­out hope of any other rec­om­pense but such as God al­ways gives to up­right deal­ings. First, you must prom­ise two things, both in your own name and for your friends, or with­out serv­ing you we shall only in­jure our­selves!”

“Name them.”

“The one is, to be still as these sleep­ing woods, let what will hap­pen and the other is, to keep the place where we shall take you, for­ever a se­cret from all mor­tal men.”

“I will do my ut­most to see both these con­di­tions ful­filled.”

“Then fol­low, for we are los­ing mo­ments that are as pre­cious as the heart’s blood to a stricken deer!”

Hey­ward could dis­tin­guish the im­pa­tient ges­ture of the scout, through the in­creas­ing shad­ows of the evening, and he moved in his foot­steps, swiftly, to­ward the place where he had left the re­main­der of the party. When they re­joined the ex­pect­ing and anx­ious fe­males, he briefly ac­quainted them with the con­di­tions of their new guide, and with the ne­ces­sity that ex­isted for their hush­ing ev­ery ap­pre­hen­sion in in­stant and se­ri­ous ex­er­tions. Although his alarm­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion was not re­ceived with­out much se­cret ter­ror by the lis­ten­ers, his earnest and im­pres­sive man­ner, aided per­haps by the na­ture of the dan­ger, suc­ceeded in brac­ing their nerves to un­dergo some un­looked-for and un­usual trial. Si­lently, and with­out a mo­ment’s de­lay, they per­mit­ted him to as­sist them from their sad­dles, and when they de­scended quickly to the wa­ter’s edge, where the scout had col­lected the rest of the party, more by the agency of ex­pres­sive ges­tures than by any use of words.

“What to do with these dumb crea­tures!” mut­tered the white man, on whom the sole con­trol of their fu­ture move­ments ap­peared to de­volve; “it would be time lost to cut their throats, and cast them into the river; and to leave them here would be to tell the Min­goes that they have not far to seek to find their own­ers!”

“Then give them their bri­dles, and let them range the woods,” Hey­ward ven­tured to sug­gest.

“No; it would be bet­ter to mis­lead the imps, and make them be­lieve they must equal a horse’s speed to run down their chase. Ay, ay, that will blind their fire­balls of eyes! Chin­gach—Hist! what stirs the bush?”

“The colt.”

“That colt, at least, must die,” mut­tered the scout, grasp­ing at the mane of the nim­ble beast, which eas­ily eluded his hand; “Un­cas, your ar­rows!”

“Hold!” ex­claimed the pro­pri­etor of the con­demned an­i­mal, aloud, with­out re­gard to the whis­per­ing tones used by the oth­ers; “spare the foal of Miriam! it is the comely off­spring of a faith­ful dam, and would will­ingly in­jure naught.”

“When men strug­gle for the sin­gle life God has given them,” said the scout, sternly, “even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of the wood. If you speak again, I shall leave you to the mercy of the Maquas! Draw to your ar­row’s head, Un­cas; we have no time for sec­ond blows.”

The low, mut­ter­ing sounds of his threat­en­ing voice were still au­di­ble, when the wounded foal, first rear­ing on its hin­der legs, plunged for­ward to its knees. It was met by Chin­gach­gook, whose knife passed across its throat quicker than thought, and then pre­cip­i­tat­ing the mo­tions of the strug­gling vic­tim, he dashed into the river, down whose stream it glided away, gasp­ing au­di­bly for breath with its ebbing life. This deed of ap­par­ent cru­elty, but of real ne­ces­sity, fell upon the spir­its of the trav­el­ers like a ter­rific warn­ing of the peril in which they stood, height­ened as it was by the calm though steady res­o­lu­tion of the ac­tors in the scene. The sis­ters shud­dered and clung closer to each other, while Hey­ward in­stinc­tively laid his hand on one of the pis­tols he had just drawn from their hol­sters, as he placed him­self be­tween his charge and those dense shad­ows that seemed to draw an im­pen­e­tra­ble veil be­fore the bo­som of the for­est.

The In­di­ans, how­ever, hes­i­tated not a mo­ment, but tak­ing the bri­dles, they led the fright­ened and re­luc­tant horses into the bed of the river.

At a short dis­tance from the shore they turned, and were soon con­cealed by the pro­jec­tion of the bank, un­der the brow of which they moved, in a di­rec­tion op­po­site to the course of the wa­ters. In the mean­time, the scout drew a ca­noe of bark from its place of con­ceal­ment be­neath some low bushes, whose branches were wav­ing with the ed­dies of the cur­rent, into which he silently mo­tioned for the fe­males to en­ter. They com­plied with­out hes­i­ta­tion, though many a fear­ful and anx­ious glance was thrown be­hind them, to­ward the thick­en­ing gloom, which now lay like a dark bar­rier along the mar­gin of the stream.

So soon as Cora and Alice were seated, the scout, with­out re­gard­ing the el­e­ment, di­rected Hey­ward to sup­port one side of the frail ves­sel, and post­ing him­self at the other, they bore it up against the stream, fol­lowed by the de­jected owner of the dead foal. In this man­ner they pro­ceeded, for many rods, in a si­lence that was only in­ter­rupted by the rip­pling of the wa­ter, as its ed­dies played around them, or the low dash made by their own cau­tious foot­steps. Hey­ward yielded the guid­ance of the ca­noe im­plic­itly to the scout, who ap­proached or re­ceded from the shore, to avoid the frag­ments of rocks, or deeper parts of the river, with a readi­ness that showed his knowl­edge of the route they held. Oc­ca­sion­ally he would stop; and in the midst of a breath­ing still­ness, that the dull but in­creas­ing roar of the wa­ter­fall only served to ren­der more im­pres­sive, he would lis­ten with painful in­tense­ness, to catch any sounds that might arise from the slum­ber­ing for­est. When as­sured that all was still, and un­able to de­tect, even by the aid of his prac­ticed senses, any sign of his ap­proach­ing foes, he would de­lib­er­ately re­sume his slow and guarded progress. At length they reached a point in the river where the rov­ing eye of Hey­ward be­came riv­eted on a clus­ter of black ob­jects, col­lected at a spot where the high bank threw a deeper shadow than usual on the dark wa­ters. He­si­tat­ing to ad­vance, he pointed out the place to the at­ten­tion of his com­pan­ion.

“Ay,” re­turned the com­posed scout, “the In­di­ans have hid the beasts with the judg­ment of na­tives! Water leaves no trail, and an owl’s eyes would be blinded by the dark­ness of such a hole.”

The whole party was soon re­united, and an­other con­sul­ta­tion was held be­tween the scout and his new com­rades, dur­ing which, they, whose fates de­pended on the faith and in­ge­nu­ity of these un­known foresters, had a lit­tle leisure to ob­serve their sit­u­a­tion more minutely.

The river was con­fined be­tween high and cragged rocks, one of which im­pended above the spot where the ca­noe rested. As these, again, were sur­mounted by tall trees, which ap­peared to tot­ter on the brows of the precipice, it gave the stream the ap­pear­ance of run­ning through a deep and nar­row dell. All be­neath the fan­tas­tic limbs and ragged tree tops, which were, here and there, dimly painted against the starry zenith, lay alike in shad­owed ob­scu­rity. Be­hind them, the cur­va­ture of the banks soon bounded the view by the same dark and wooded out­line; but in front, and ap­par­ently at no great dis­tance, the wa­ter seemed piled against the heav­ens, whence it tum­bled into cav­erns, out of which is­sued those sullen sounds that had loaded the evening at­mos­phere. It seemed, in truth, to be a spot de­voted to seclu­sion, and the sis­ters im­bibed a sooth­ing im­pres­sion of se­cu­rity, as they gazed upon its ro­man­tic though not un­ap­palling beau­ties. A gen­eral move­ment among their con­duc­tors, how­ever, soon re­called them from a con­tem­pla­tion of the wild charms that night had as­sisted to lend the place to a painful sense of their real peril.

The horses had been se­cured to some scat­ter­ing shrubs that grew in the fis­sures of the rocks, where, stand­ing in the wa­ter, they were left to pass the night. The scout di­rected Hey­ward and his dis­con­so­late fel­low trav­el­ers to seat them­selves in the for­ward end of the ca­noe, and took pos­ses­sion of the other him­self, as erect and steady as if he floated in a ves­sel of much firmer ma­te­ri­als. The In­di­ans war­ily re­traced their steps to­ward the place they had left, when the scout, plac­ing his pole against a rock, by a pow­er­ful shove, sent his frail bark di­rectly into the tur­bu­lent stream. For many min­utes the strug­gle be­tween the light bub­ble in which they floated and the swift cur­rent was se­vere and doubt­ful. For­bid­den to stir even a hand, and al­most afraid to breath, lest they should ex­pose the frail fab­ric to the fury of the stream, the pas­sen­gers watched the glanc­ing wa­ters in fever­ish sus­pense. Twenty times they thought the whirling ed­dies were sweep­ing them to de­struc­tion, when the mas­ter-hand of their pi­lot would bring the bows of the ca­noe to stem the rapid. A long, a vig­or­ous, and, as it ap­peared to the fe­males, a des­per­ate ef­fort, closed the strug­gle. Just as Alice veiled her eyes in hor­ror, un­der the im­pres­sion that they were about to be swept within the vor­tex at the foot of the cataract, the ca­noe floated, sta­tion­ary, at the side of a flat rock, that lay on a level with the wa­ter.

“Where are we, and what is next to be done!” de­manded Hey­ward, per­ceiv­ing that the ex­er­tions of the scout had ceased.

“You are at the foot of Glenn’s,” re­turned the other, speak­ing aloud, with­out fear of con­se­quences within the roar of the cataract; “and the next thing is to make a steady land­ing, lest the ca­noe up­set, and you should go down again the hard road we have trav­eled faster than you came up; ’tis a hard rift to stem, when the river is a lit­tle swelled; and five is an un­nat­u­ral num­ber to keep dry, in a hurry-skurry, with a lit­tle birchen bark and gum. There, go you all on the rock, and I will bring up the Mo­hi­cans with the veni­son. A man had bet­ter sleep with­out his scalp, than fam­ish in the midst of plenty.”

His pas­sen­gers gladly com­plied with these di­rec­tions. As the last foot touched the rock, the ca­noe whirled from its sta­tion, when the tall form of the scout was seen, for an in­stant, glid­ing above the wa­ters, be­fore it dis­ap­peared in the im­pen­e­tra­ble dark­ness that rested on the bed of the river. Left by their guide, the trav­el­ers re­mained a few min­utes in help­less ig­no­rance, afraid even to move along the bro­ken rocks, lest a false step should pre­cip­i­tate them down some one of the many deep and roar­ing cav­erns, into which the wa­ter seemed to tum­ble, on ev­ery side of them. Their sus­pense, how­ever, was soon re­lieved; for, aided by the skill of the na­tives, the ca­noe shot back into the eddy, and floated again at the side of the low rock, be­fore they thought the scout had even time to re­join his com­pan­ions.

“We are now for­ti­fied, gar­risoned, and pro­vi­sioned,” cried Hey­ward cheer­fully, “and may set Mont­calm and his al­lies at de­fi­ance. How, now, my vig­i­lant sen­tinel, can see any­thing of those you call the Iro­quois, on the main land!”

“I call them Iro­quois, be­cause to me ev­ery na­tive, who speaks a for­eign tongue, is ac­counted an en­emy, though he may pre­tend to serve the king! If Webb wants faith and hon­esty in an In­dian, let him bring out the tribes of the Delawares, and send these greedy and ly­ing Mo­hawks and Onei­das, with their six na­tions of var­lets, where in na­ture they be­long, among the French!”

“We should then ex­change a war­like for a use­less friend! I have heard that the Delawares have laid aside the hatchet, and are con­tent to be called women!”

“Aye, shame on the Hol­lan­ders and Iro­quois, who cir­cum­vented them by their dev­il­tries, into such a treaty! But I have known them for twenty years, and I call him liar that says cow­ardly blood runs in the veins of a Delaware. You have driven their tribes from the seashore, and would now be­lieve what their en­e­mies say, that you may sleep at night upon an easy pil­low. No, no; to me, ev­ery In­dian who speaks a for­eign tongue is an Iro­quois, whether the cas­tle9 of his tribe be in Canada, or be in York.”

Hey­ward, per­ceiv­ing that the stub­born ad­her­ence of the scout to the cause of his friends the Delawares, or Mo­hi­cans, for they were branches of the same nu­mer­ous peo­ple, was likely to pro­long a use­less dis­cus­sion, changed the sub­ject.

“Treaty or no treaty, I know full well that your two com­pan­ions are brave and cau­tious war­riors! have they heard or seen any­thing of our en­e­mies!”

“An In­dian is a mor­tal to be felt afore he is seen,” re­turned the scout, as­cend­ing the rock, and throw­ing the deer care­lessly down. “I trust to other signs than such as come in at the eye, when I am out­ly­ing on the trail of the Min­goes.”

“Do your ears tell you that they have traced our re­treat?”

“I should be sorry to think they had, though this is a spot that stout courage might hold for a smart scrim­mage. I will not deny, how­ever, but the horses cow­ered when I passed them, as though they scented the wolves; and a wolf is a beast that is apt to hover about an In­dian am­bush­ment, crav­ing the of­fals of the deer the sav­ages kill.”

“You for­get the buck at your feet! or, may we not owe their visit to the dead colt? Ha! what noise is that?”

“Poor Miriam!” mur­mured the stranger; “thy foal was fore­or­dained to be­come a prey to rav­en­ous beasts!” Then, sud­denly lift­ing up his voice, amid the eter­nal din of the wa­ters, he sang aloud:

“First born of Egypt, smite did He,
Of mankind, and of beast also;
O, Egypt! won­ders sent ’midst thee,
On Pharaoh and his ser­vants too!”

“The death of the colt sits heavy on the heart of its owner,” said the scout; “but it’s a good sign to see a man ac­count upon his dumb friends. He has the re­li­gion of the mat­ter, in be­liev­ing what is to hap­pen will hap­pen; and with such a con­so­la­tion, it won’t be long afore he sub­mits to the ra­tio­nal­ity of killing a four-footed beast to save the lives of hu­man men. It may be as you say,” he con­tin­ued, re­vert­ing to the pur­port of Hey­ward’s last re­mark; “and the greater the rea­son why we should cut our steaks, and let the car­cass drive down the stream, or we shall have the pack howl­ing along the cliffs, be­grudg­ing ev­ery mouth­ful we swal­low. Be­sides, though the Delaware tongue is the same as a book to the Iro­quois, the cun­ning var­lets are quick enough at un­der­stand­ing the rea­son of a wolf’s howl.”

The scout, while mak­ing his re­marks, was bus­ied in col­lect­ing cer­tain nec­es­sary im­ple­ments; as he con­cluded, he moved silently by the group of trav­el­ers, ac­com­pa­nied by the Mo­hi­cans, who seemed to com­pre­hend his in­ten­tions with in­stinc­tive readi­ness, when the whole three dis­ap­peared in suc­ces­sion, seem­ing to van­ish against the dark face of a per­pen­dic­u­lar rock that rose to the height of a few yards, within as many feet of the wa­ter’s edge.

VI

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide;
He wales a por­tion with ju­di­cious care;
And “Let us wor­ship God,” he says, with solemn air.

Burns

Hey­ward and his fe­male com­pan­ions wit­nessed this mys­te­ri­ous move­ment with se­cret un­easi­ness; for, though the con­duct of the white man had hith­erto been above re­proach, his rude equip­ments, blunt ad­dress, and strong an­tipathies, to­gether with the char­ac­ter of his silent as­so­ciates, were all causes for ex­cit­ing dis­trust in minds that had been so re­cently alarmed by In­dian treach­ery.

The stranger alone dis­re­garded the pass­ing in­ci­dents. He seated him­self on a pro­jec­tion of the rocks, whence he gave no other signs of con­scious­ness than by the strug­gles of his spirit, as man­i­fested in fre­quent and heavy sighs. Smoth­ered voices were next heard, as though men called to each other in the bow­els of the earth, when a sud­den light flashed upon those with­out, and laid bare the much-prized se­cret of the place.

At the fur­ther ex­trem­ity of a nar­row, deep cav­ern in the rock, whose length ap­peared much ex­tended by the per­spec­tive and the na­ture of the light by which it was seen, was seated the scout, hold­ing a blaz­ing knot of pine. The strong glare of the fire fell full upon his sturdy, weather-beaten coun­te­nance and for­est at­tire, lend­ing an air of ro­man­tic wild­ness to the as­pect of an in­di­vid­ual, who, seen by the sober light of day, would have ex­hib­ited the pe­cu­liar­i­ties of a man re­mark­able for the strange­ness of his dress, the iron­like in­flex­i­bil­ity of his frame, and the sin­gu­lar com­pound of quick, vig­i­lant sagac­ity, and of ex­quis­ite sim­plic­ity, that by turns usurped the pos­ses­sion of his mus­cu­lar fea­tures. At a lit­tle dis­tance in ad­vance stood Un­cas, his whole per­son thrown pow­er­fully into view. The trav­el­ers anx­iously re­garded the up­right, flex­i­ble fig­ure of the young Mo­hi­can, grace­ful and un­re­strained in the at­ti­tudes and move­ments of na­ture. Though his per­son was more than usu­ally screened by a green and fringed hunt­ing-shirt, like that of the white man, there was no con­ceal­ment to his dark, glanc­ing, fear­less eye, alike ter­ri­ble and calm; the bold out­line of his high, haughty fea­tures, pure in their na­tive red; or to the dig­ni­fied el­e­va­tion of his re­ced­ing fore­head, to­gether with all the finest pro­por­tions of a no­ble head, bared to the gen­er­ous scalp­ing tuft. It was the first op­por­tu­nity pos­sessed by Dun­can and his com­pan­ions to view the marked lin­ea­ments of ei­ther of their In­dian at­ten­dants, and each in­di­vid­ual of the party felt re­lieved from a bur­den of doubt, as the proud and de­ter­mined, though wild ex­pres­sion of the fea­tures of the young war­rior forced it­self on their no­tice. They felt it might be a be­ing par­tially be­nighted in the vale of ig­no­rance, but it could not be one who would will­ingly de­vote his rich nat­u­ral gifts to the pur­poses of wan­ton treach­ery. The in­gen­u­ous Alice gazed at his free air and proud car­riage, as she would have looked upon some pre­cious relic of the Gre­cian chisel, to which life had been im­parted by the in­ter­ven­tion of a mir­a­cle; while Hey­ward, though ac­cus­tomed to see the per­fec­tion of form which abounds among the un­cor­rupted na­tives, openly ex­pressed his ad­mi­ra­tion at such an un­blem­ished spec­i­men of the no­blest pro­por­tions of man.

“I could sleep in peace,” whis­pered Alice, in re­ply, “with such a fear­less and gen­er­ous-look­ing youth for my sen­tinel. Surely, Dun­can, those cruel mur­ders, those ter­rific scenes of tor­ture, of which we read and hear so much, are never acted in the pres­ence of such as he!”

“This cer­tainly is a rare and bril­liant in­stance of those nat­u­ral qual­i­ties in which these pe­cu­liar peo­ple are said to ex­cel,” he an­swered. “I agree with you, Alice, in think­ing that such a front and eye were formed rather to in­tim­i­date than to de­ceive; but let us not prac­tice a de­cep­tion upon our­selves, by ex­pect­ing any other ex­hi­bi­tion of what we es­teem virtue than ac­cord­ing to the fash­ion of the sav­age. As bright ex­am­ples of great qual­i­ties are but too un­com­mon among Chris­tians, so are they sin­gu­lar and soli­tary with the In­di­ans; though, for the honor of our com­mon na­ture, nei­ther are in­ca­pable of pro­duc­ing them. Let us then hope that this Mo­hi­can may not dis­ap­point our wishes, but prove what his looks as­sert him to be, a brave and con­stant friend.”

“Now Ma­jor Hey­ward speaks as Ma­jor Hey­ward should,” said Cora; “who that looks at this crea­ture of na­ture, re­mem­bers the shade of his skin?”

A short and ap­par­ently an em­bar­rassed si­lence suc­ceeded this re­mark, which was in­ter­rupted by the scout call­ing to them, aloud, to en­ter.

“This fire be­gins to show too bright a flame,” he con­tin­ued, as they com­plied, “and might light the Min­goes to our un­do­ing. Un­cas, drop the blan­ket, and show the knaves its dark side. This is not such a sup­per as a ma­jor of the Royal Amer­i­cans has a right to ex­pect, but I’ve known stout de­tach­ments of the corps glad to eat their veni­son raw, and with­out a rel­ish, too.10 Here, you see, we have plenty of salt, and can make a quick broil. There’s fresh sas­safras boughs for the ladies to sit on, which may not be as proud as their my-hog-guinea chairs, but which sends up a sweeter fla­vor, than the skin of any hog can do, be it of Guinea, or be it of any other land. Come, friend, don’t be mourn­ful for the colt; ’twas an in­no­cent thing, and had not seen much hard­ship. Its death will save the crea­ture many a sore back and weary foot!”

Un­cas did as the other had di­rected, and when the voice of Hawk­eye ceased, the roar of the cataract sounded like the rum­bling of dis­tant thun­der.

“Are we quite safe in this cav­ern?” de­manded Hey­ward. “Is there no dan­ger of sur­prise? A sin­gle armed man, at its en­trance, would hold us at his mercy.”

A spec­tral-look­ing fig­ure stalked from out of the dark­ness be­hind the scout, and seiz­ing a blaz­ing brand, held it to­ward the fur­ther ex­trem­ity of their place of re­treat. Alice ut­tered a faint shriek, and even Cora rose to her feet, as this ap­palling ob­ject moved into the light; but a sin­gle word from Hey­ward calmed them, with the as­sur­ance it was only their at­ten­dant, Chin­gach­gook, who, lift­ing an­other blan­ket, dis­cov­ered that the cav­ern had two out­lets. Then, hold­ing the brand, he crossed a deep, nar­row chasm in the rocks which ran at right an­gles with the pas­sage they were in, but which, un­like that, was open to the heav­ens, and en­tered an­other cave, an­swer­ing to the de­scrip­tion of the first, in ev­ery es­sen­tial par­tic­u­lar.

“Such old foxes as Chin­gach­gook and my­self are not of­ten caught in a bar­row with one hole,” said Hawk­eye, laugh­ing; “you can eas­ily see the cun­ning of the place—the rock is black lime­stone, which ev­ery­body knows is soft; it makes no un­com­fort­able pil­low, where brush and pine wood is scarce; well, the fall was once a few yards be­low us, and I dare to say was, in its time, as reg­u­lar and as hand­some a sheet of wa­ter as any along the Hud­son. But old age is a great in­jury to good looks, as these sweet young ladies have yet to l’arn! The place is sadly changed! Th­ese rocks are full of cracks, and in some places they are softer than at oth­er­some, and the wa­ter has worked out deep hol­lows for it­self, un­til it has fallen back, ay, some hun­dred feet, break­ing here and wear­ing there, un­til the falls have nei­ther shape nor con­sis­tency.”

“In what part of them are we?” asked Hey­ward.

“Why, we are nigh the spot that Prov­i­dence first placed them at, but where, it seems, they were too re­bel­lious to stay. The rock proved softer on each side of us, and so they left the cen­ter of the river bare and dry, first work­ing out these two lit­tle holes for us to hide in.”

“We are then on an is­land!”

“Ay! there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and be­low. If you had day­light, it would be worth the trou­ble to step up on the height of this rock, and look at the per­ver­sity of the wa­ter. It falls by no rule at all; some­times it leaps, some­times it tum­bles; there it skips; here it shoots; in one place ’tis white as snow, and in an­other ’tis green as grass; here­abouts, it pitches into deep hol­lows, that rum­ble and crush the ’arth; and there­aways, it rip­ples and sings like a brook, fash­ion­ing whirlpools and gul­lies in the old stone, as if ’twas no harder than trod­den clay. The whole de­sign of the river seems dis­con­certed. First it runs smoothly, as if mean­ing to go down the de­scent as things were or­dered; then it an­gles about and faces the shores; nor are there places want­ing where it looks back­ward, as if un­will­ing to leave the wilder­ness, to min­gle with the salt. Ay, lady, the fine cob­web-look­ing cloth you wear at your throat is coarse, and like a fish­net, to lit­tle spots I can show you, where the river fab­ri­cates all sorts of im­ages, as if hav­ing broke loose from or­der, it would try its hand at ev­ery­thing. And yet what does it amount to! After the wa­ter has been suf­fered so to have its will, for a time, like a head­strong man, it is gath­ered to­gether by the hand that made it, and a few rods be­low you may see it all, flow­ing on steadily to­ward the sea, as was fore­or­dained from the first foun­da­tion of the ’arth!”

While his au­di­tors re­ceived a cheer­ing as­sur­ance of the se­cu­rity of their place of con­ceal­ment from this un­tu­tored de­scrip­tion of Glenn’s,11 they were much in­clined to judge dif­fer­ently from Hawk­eye, of its wild beau­ties. But they were not in a sit­u­a­tion to suf­fer their thoughts to dwell on the charms of nat­u­ral ob­jects; and, as the scout had not found it nec­es­sary to cease his culi­nary labors while he spoke, un­less to point out, with a bro­ken fork, the di­rec­tion of some par­tic­u­larly ob­nox­ious point in the re­bel­lious stream, they now suf­fered their at­ten­tion to be drawn to the nec­es­sary though more vul­gar con­sid­er­a­tion of their sup­per.

The repast, which was greatly aided by the ad­di­tion of a few del­i­ca­cies that Hey­ward had the pre­cau­tion to bring with him when they left their horses, was ex­ceed­ingly re­fresh­ing to the weary party. Un­cas acted as at­ten­dant to the fe­males, per­form­ing all the lit­tle of­fices within his power, with a mix­ture of dig­nity and anx­ious grace, that served to amuse Hey­ward, who well knew that it was an ut­ter in­no­va­tion on the In­dian cus­toms, which for­bid their war­riors to de­scend to any me­nial em­ploy­ment, es­pe­cially in fa­vor of their women. As the rights of hos­pi­tal­ity were, how­ever, con­sid­ered sa­cred among them, this lit­tle de­par­ture from the dig­nity of man­hood ex­cited no au­di­ble com­ment. Had there been one there suf­fi­ciently dis­en­gaged to be­come a close ob­server, he might have fan­cied that the ser­vices of the young chief were not en­tirely im­par­tial. That while he ten­dered to Alice the gourd of sweet wa­ter, and the veni­son in a trencher, neatly carved from the knot of the pep­peridge, with suf­fi­cient cour­tesy, in per­form­ing the same of­fices to her sis­ter, his dark eye lin­gered on her rich, speak­ing coun­te­nance. Once or twice he was com­pelled to speak, to com­mand her at­ten­tion of those he served. In such cases he made use of English, bro­ken and im­per­fect, but suf­fi­ciently in­tel­li­gi­ble, and which he ren­dered so mild and mu­si­cal, by his deep, gut­tural voice, that it never failed to cause both ladies to look up in ad­mi­ra­tion and as­ton­ish­ment. In the course of these ci­vil­i­ties, a few sen­tences were ex­changed, that served to es­tab­lish the ap­pear­ance of an am­i­ca­ble in­ter­course be­tween the par­ties.

In the mean­while, the grav­ity of Ching­cach­gook re­mained im­mov­able. He had seated him­self more within the cir­cle of light, where the fre­quent, un­easy glances of his guests were bet­ter en­abled to sep­a­rate the nat­u­ral ex­pres­sion of his face from the ar­ti­fi­cial ter­rors of the war paint. They found a strong re­sem­blance be­tween fa­ther and son, with the dif­fer­ence that might be ex­pected from age and hard­ships. The fierce­ness of his coun­te­nance now seemed to slum­ber, and in its place was to be seen the quiet, va­cant com­po­sure which dis­tin­guishes an In­dian war­rior, when his fac­ul­ties are not re­quired for any of the greater pur­poses of his ex­is­tence. It was, how­ever, easy to be seen, by the oc­ca­sional gleams that shot across his swarthy vis­age, that it was only nec­es­sary to arouse his pas­sions, in or­der to give full ef­fect to the ter­rific de­vice which he had adopted to in­tim­i­date his en­e­mies. On the other hand, the quick, rov­ing eye of the scout sel­dom rested. He ate and drank with an ap­petite that no sense of dan­ger could dis­turb, but his vig­i­lance seemed never to desert him. Twenty times the gourd or the veni­son was sus­pended be­fore his lips, while his head was turned aside, as though he lis­tened to some dis­tant and dis­trusted sounds—a move­ment that never failed to re­call his guests from re­gard­ing the nov­el­ties of their sit­u­a­tion, to a rec­ol­lec­tion of the alarm­ing rea­sons that had driven them to seek it. As these fre­quent pauses were never fol­lowed by any re­mark, the mo­men­tary un­easi­ness they cre­ated quickly passed away, and for a time was for­got­ten.

“Come, friend,” said Hawk­eye, draw­ing out a keg from be­neath a cover of leaves, to­ward the close of the repast, and ad­dress­ing the stranger who sat at his el­bow, do­ing great jus­tice to his culi­nary skill, “try a lit­tle spruce; ’twill wash away all thoughts of the colt, and quicken the life in your bo­som. I drink to our bet­ter friend­ship, hop­ing that a lit­tle horse­flesh may leave no heart-burn­ings atween us. How do you name your­self?”

“Ga­mut—David Ga­mut,” re­turned the singing mas­ter, pre­par­ing to wash down his sor­rows in a pow­er­ful draught of the woods­man’s high-fla­vored and well-laced com­pound.

“A very good name, and, I dare say, handed down from hon­est fore­fa­thers. I’m an ad­mi­ra­tor of names, though the Chris­tian fash­ions fall far be­low sav­age cus­toms in this par­tic­u­lar. The big­gest cow­ard I ever knew as called Lyon; and his wife, Pa­tience, would scold you out of hear­ing in less time than a hunted deer would run a rod. With an In­dian ’tis a mat­ter of con­science; what he calls him­self, he gen­er­ally is—not that Chin­gach­gook, which sig­ni­fies Big Sar­pent, is re­ally a snake, big or lit­tle; but that he un­der­stands the wind­ings and turn­ings of hu­man natur’, and is silent, and strikes his en­e­mies when they least ex­pect him. What may be your call­ing?”

“I am an un­wor­thy in­struc­tor in the art of psalmody.”

“Anan!”

“I teach singing to the youths of the Con­necti­cut levy.”

“You might be bet­ter em­ployed. The young hounds go laugh­ing and singing too much al­ready through the woods, when they ought not to breathe louder than a fox in his cover. Can you use the smooth­bore, or han­dle the ri­fle?”

“Praised be God, I have never had oc­ca­sion to med­dle with mur­der­ous im­ple­ments!”

“Per­haps you un­der­stand the com­pass, and lay down the wa­ter­courses and moun­tains of the wilder­ness on pa­per, in or­der that they who fol­low may find places by their given names?”

“I prac­tice no such em­ploy­ment.”

“You have a pair of legs that might make a long path seem short! you jour­ney some­times, I fancy, with tid­ings for the gen­eral.”

“Never; I fol­low no other than my own high vo­ca­tion, which is in­struc­tion in sa­cred mu­sic!”

“ ’Tis a strange call­ing!” mut­tered Hawk­eye, with an in­ward laugh, “to go through life, like a cat­bird, mock­ing all the ups and downs that may hap­pen to come out of other men’s throats. Well, friend, I sup­pose it is your gift, and mustn’t be de­nied any more than if ’twas shoot­ing, or some other bet­ter in­cli­na­tion. Let us hear what you can do in that way; ’twill be a friendly man­ner of say­ing good night, for ’tis time that these ladies should be get­ting strength for a hard and a long push, in the pride of the morn­ing, afore the Maquas are stir­ring.”

“With joy­ful plea­sure do I con­sent,” said David, ad­just­ing his iron-rimmed spec­ta­cles, and pro­duc­ing his beloved lit­tle vol­ume, which he im­me­di­ately ten­dered to Alice. “What can be more fit­ting and con­so­la­tory, than to of­fer up evening praise, af­ter a day of such ex­ceed­ing jeop­ardy!”

Alice smiled; but, re­gard­ing Hey­ward, she blushed and hes­i­tated.

“In­dulge your­self,” he whis­pered; “ought not the sug­ges­tion of the wor­thy name­sake of the Psalmist to have its weight at such a mo­ment?”

En­cour­aged by his opin­ion, Alice did what her pi­ous in­cli­na­tions, and her keen rel­ish for gen­tle sounds, had be­fore so strongly urged. The book was open at a hymn not ill adapted to their sit­u­a­tion, and in which the poet, no longer goaded by his de­sire to ex­cel the in­spired King of Is­rael, had dis­cov­ered some chas­tened and re­spectable pow­ers. Cora be­trayed a dis­po­si­tion to sup­port her sis­ter, and the sa­cred song pro­ceeded, af­ter the in­dis­pens­able pre­lim­i­nar­ies of the pitch­pipe, and the tune had been duly at­tended to by the me­thod­i­cal David.

The air was solemn and slow. At times it rose to the fullest com­pass of the rich voices of the fe­males, who hung over their lit­tle book in holy ex­cite­ment, and again it sank so low, that the rush­ing of the wa­ters ran through their melody, like a hol­low ac­com­pa­ni­ment. The nat­u­ral taste and true ear of David gov­erned and mod­i­fied the sounds to suit the con­fined cav­ern, ev­ery crevice and cranny of which was filled with the thrilling notes of their flex­i­ble voices. The In­di­ans riv­eted their eyes on the rocks, and lis­tened with an at­ten­tion that seemed to turn them into stone. But the scout, who had placed his chin in his hand, with an ex­pres­sion of cold in­dif­fer­ence, grad­u­ally suf­fered his rigid fea­tures to re­lax, un­til, as verse suc­ceeded verse, he felt his iron na­ture sub­dued, while his rec­ol­lec­tion was car­ried back to boy­hood, when his ears had been ac­cus­tomed to lis­ten to sim­i­lar sounds of praise, in the set­tle­ments of the colony. His rov­ing eyes be­gan to moisten, and be­fore the hymn was ended scald­ing tears rolled out of foun­tains that had long seemed dry, and fol­lowed each other down those cheeks, that had of­tener felt the storms of heaven than any tes­ti­mo­ni­als of weak­ness. The singers were dwelling on one of those low, dy­ing chords, which the ear de­vours with such greedy rap­ture, as if con­scious that it is about to lose them, when a cry, that seemed nei­ther hu­man nor earthly, rose in the out­ward air, pen­e­trat­ing not only the re­cesses of the cav­ern, but to the in­most hearts of all who heard it. It was fol­lowed by a still­ness ap­par­ently as deep as if the wa­ters had been checked in their fu­ri­ous progress, at such a hor­rid and un­usual in­ter­rup­tion.

“What is it?” mur­mured Alice, af­ter a few mo­ments of ter­ri­ble sus­pense.

“What is it?” re­peated Hew­yard aloud.

Nei­ther Hawk­eye nor the In­di­ans made any re­ply. They lis­tened, as if ex­pect­ing the sound would be re­peated, with a man­ner that ex­pressed their own as­ton­ish­ment. At length they spoke to­gether, earnestly, in the Delaware lan­guage, when Un­cas, pass­ing by the in­ner and most con­cealed aper­ture, cau­tiously left the cav­ern. When he had gone, the scout first spoke in English.

“What it is, or what it is not, none here can tell, though two of us have ranged the woods for more than thirty years. I did be­lieve there was no cry that In­dian or beast could make, that my ears had not heard; but this has proved that I was only a vain and con­ceited mor­tal.”

“Was it not, then, the shout the war­riors make when they wish to in­tim­i­date their en­e­mies?” asked Cora who stood draw­ing her veil about her per­son, with a calm­ness to which her ag­i­tated sis­ter was a stranger.

“No, no; this was bad, and shock­ing, and had a sort of un­hu­man sound; but when you once hear the war-whoop, you will never mis­take it for any­thing else. Well, Un­cas!” speak­ing in Delaware to the young chief as he re-en­tered, “what see you? do our lights shine through the blan­kets?”

The an­swer was short, and ap­par­ently de­cided, be­ing given in the same tongue.

“There is noth­ing to be seen with­out,” con­tin­ued Hawk­eye, shak­ing his head in dis­con­tent; “and our hid­ing-place is still in dark­ness. Pass into the other cave, you that need it, and seek for sleep; we must be afoot long be­fore the sun, and make the most of our time to get to Ed­ward, while the Min­goes are tak­ing their morn­ing nap.”

Cora set the ex­am­ple of com­pli­ance, with a steadi­ness that taught the more timid Alice the ne­ces­sity of obe­di­ence. Be­fore leav­ing the place, how­ever, she whis­pered a re­quest to Dun­can, that he would fol­low. Un­cas raised the blan­ket for their pas­sage, and as the sis­ters turned to thank him for this act of at­ten­tion, they saw the scout seated again be­fore the dy­ing em­bers, with his face rest­ing on his hands, in a man­ner which showed how deeply he brooded on the un­ac­count­able in­ter­rup­tion which had bro­ken up their evening de­vo­tions.

Hey­ward took with him a blaz­ing knot, which threw a dim light through the nar­row vista of their new apart­ment. Plac­ing it in a fa­vor­able po­si­tion, he joined the fe­males, who now found them­selves alone with him for the first time since they had left the friendly ram­parts of Fort Ed­ward.

“Leave us not, Dun­can,” said Alice: “we can­not sleep in such a place as this, with that hor­rid cry still ring­ing in our ears.”

“First let us ex­am­ine into the se­cu­rity of your fortress,” he an­swered, “and then we will speak of rest.”

He ap­proached the fur­ther end of the cav­ern, to an out­let, which, like the oth­ers, was con­cealed by blan­kets; and re­mov­ing the thick screen, breathed the fresh and re­viv­ing air from the cataract. One arm of the river flowed through a deep, nar­row ravine, which its cur­rent had worn in the soft rock, di­rectly be­neath his feet, form­ing an ef­fec­tual de­fense, as he be­lieved, against any dan­ger from that quar­ter; the wa­ter, a few rods above them, plung­ing, glanc­ing, and sweep­ing along in its most vi­o­lent and bro­ken man­ner.

“Na­ture has made an im­pen­e­tra­ble bar­rier on this side,” he con­tin­ued, point­ing down the per­pen­dic­u­lar de­cliv­ity into the dark cur­rent be­fore he dropped the blan­ket; “and as you know that good men and true are on guard in front I see no rea­son why the ad­vice of our hon­est host should be dis­re­garded. I am cer­tain Cora will join me in say­ing that sleep is nec­es­sary to you both.”

“Cora may sub­mit to the jus­tice of your opin­ion though she can­not put it in prac­tice,” re­turned the el­der sis­ter, who had placed her­self by the side of Alice, on a couch of sas­safras; “there would be other causes to chase away sleep, though we had been spared the shock of this mys­te­ri­ous noise. Ask your­self, Hey­ward, can daugh­ters for­get the anx­i­ety a fa­ther must en­dure, whose chil­dren lodge he knows not where or how, in such a wilder­ness, and in the midst of so many per­ils?”

“He is a sol­dier, and knows how to es­ti­mate the chances of the woods.”

“He is a fa­ther, and can­not deny his na­ture.”

“How kind has he ever been to all my fol­lies, how ten­der and in­dul­gent to all my wishes!” sobbed Alice. “We have been self­ish, sis­ter, in urg­ing our visit at such haz­ard.”

“I may have been rash in press­ing his con­sent in a mo­ment of much em­bar­rass­ment, but I would have proved to him, that how­ever oth­ers might ne­glect him in his strait his chil­dren at least were faith­ful.”

“When he heard of your ar­rival at Ed­ward,” said Hey­ward, kindly, “there was a pow­er­ful strug­gle in his bo­som be­tween fear and love; though the lat­ter, height­ened, if pos­si­ble, by so long a sep­a­ra­tion, quickly pre­vailed. ‘It is the spirit of my no­ble-minded Cora that leads them, Dun­can,’ he said, ‘and I will not balk it. Would to God, that he who holds the honor of our royal mas­ter in his guardian­ship, would show but half her firm­ness!’ ”

“And did he not speak of me, Hey­ward?” de­manded Alice, with jeal­ous af­fec­tion; “surely, he for­got not al­to­gether his lit­tle Elsie?”

“That were im­pos­si­ble,” re­turned the young man; “he called you by a thou­sand en­dear­ing ep­i­thets, that I may not pre­sume to use, but to the jus­tice of which, I can warmly tes­tify. Once, in­deed, he said—”

Dun­can ceased speak­ing; for while his eyes were riv­eted on those of Alice, who had turned to­ward him with the ea­ger­ness of fil­ial af­fec­tion, to catch his words, the same strong, hor­rid cry, as be­fore, filled the air, and ren­dered him mute. A long, breath­less si­lence suc­ceeded, dur­ing which each looked at the oth­ers in fear­ful ex­pec­ta­tion of hear­ing the sound re­peated. At length, the blan­ket was slowly raised, and the scout stood in the aper­ture with a coun­te­nance whose firm­ness ev­i­dently be­gan to give way be­fore a mys­tery that seemed to threaten some dan­ger, against which all his cun­ning and ex­pe­ri­ence might prove of no avail.

VII

They do not sleep,
On yon­der cliffs, a griz­zly band,
I see them sit.

Gray

“ ’Twould be ne­glect­ing a warn­ing that is given for our good to lie hid any longer,” said Hawk­eye “when such sounds are raised in the for­est. Th­ese gen­tle ones may keep close, but the Mo­hi­cans and I will watch upon the rock, where I sup­pose a ma­jor of the Six­ti­eth would wish to keep us com­pany.”

“Is, then, our dan­ger so press­ing?” asked Cora.

“He who makes strange sounds, and gives them out for man’s in­for­ma­tion, alone knows our dan­ger. I should think my­self wicked, unto re­bel­lion against His will, was I to bur­row with such warn­ings in the air! Even the weak soul who passes his days in singing is stirred by the cry, and, as he says, is ‘ready to go forth to the bat­tle.’ If ’twere only a bat­tle, it would be a thing un­der­stood by us all, and eas­ily man­aged; but I have heard that when such shrieks are atween heaven and ’arth, it be­to­kens an­other sort of war­fare!”

“If all our rea­sons for fear, my friend, are con­fined to such as pro­ceed from su­per­nat­u­ral causes, we have but lit­tle oc­ca­sion to be alarmed,” con­tin­ued the undis­turbed Cora, “are you cer­tain that our en­e­mies have not in­vented some new and in­ge­nious method to strike us with ter­ror, that their con­quest may be­come more easy?”

“Lady,” re­turned the scout, solemnly, “I have lis­tened to all the sounds of the woods for thirty years, as a man will lis­ten whose life and death de­pend on the quick­ness of his ears. There is no whine of the pan­ther, no whis­tle of the cat­bird, nor any in­ven­tion of the dev­il­ish Min­goes, that can cheat me! I have heard the for­est moan like mor­tal men in their af­flic­tion; of­ten, and again, have I lis­tened to the wind play­ing its mu­sic in the branches of the gir­dled trees; and I have heard the light­ning crack­ing in the air like the snap­ping of blaz­ing brush as it spit­ted forth sparks and forked flames; but never have I thought that I heard more than the plea­sure of him who sported with the things of his hand. But nei­ther the Mo­hi­cans, nor I, who am a white man with­out a cross, can ex­plain the cry just heard. We, there­fore, be­lieve it a sign given for our good.”

“It is ex­tra­or­di­nary!” said Hey­ward, tak­ing his pis­tols from the place where he had laid them on en­ter­ing; “be it a sign of peace or a sig­nal of war, it must be looked to. Lead the way, my friend; I fol­low.”

On is­su­ing from their place of con­fine­ment, the whole party in­stantly ex­pe­ri­enced a grate­ful ren­o­va­tion of spir­its, by ex­chang­ing the pent air of the hid­ing-place for the cool and in­vig­o­rat­ing at­mos­phere which played around the whirlpools and pitches of the cataract. A heavy evening breeze swept along the sur­face of the river, and seemed to drive the roar of the falls into the re­cesses of their own cav­ern, whence it is­sued heav­ily and con­stant, like thun­der rum­bling be­yond the dis­tant hills. The moon had risen, and its light was al­ready glanc­ing here and there on the wa­ters above them; but the ex­trem­ity of the rock where they stood still lay in shadow. With the ex­cep­tion of the sounds pro­duced by the rush­ing wa­ters, and an oc­ca­sional breath­ing of the air, as it mur­mured past them in fit­ful cur­rents, the scene was as still as night and soli­tude could make it. In vain were the eyes of each in­di­vid­ual bent along the op­po­site shores, in quest of some signs of life, that might ex­plain the na­ture of the in­ter­rup­tion they had heard. Their anx­ious and ea­ger looks were baf­fled by the de­cep­tive light, or rested only on naked rocks, and straight and im­mov­able trees.

“Here is noth­ing to be seen but the gloom and quiet of a lovely evening,” whis­pered Dun­can; “how much should we prize such a scene, and all this breath­ing soli­tude, at any other mo­ment, Cora! Fancy your­selves in se­cu­rity, and what now, per­haps, in­creases your ter­ror, may be made con­ducive to en­joy­ment—”

“Lis­ten!” in­ter­rupted Alice.

The cau­tion was un­nec­es­sary. Once more the same sound arose, as if from the bed of the river, and hav­ing bro­ken out of the nar­row bounds of the cliffs, was heard un­du­lat­ing through the for­est, in dis­tant and dy­ing ca­dences.

“Can any here give a name to such a cry?” de­manded Hawk­eye, when the last echo was lost in the woods; “if so, let him speak; for my­self, I judge it not to be­long to ’arth!”

“Here, then, is one who can un­de­ceive you,” said Dun­can; “I know the sound full well, for of­ten have I heard it on the field of bat­tle, and in sit­u­a­tions which are fre­quent in a sol­dier’s life. ’Tis the hor­rid shriek that a horse will give in his agony; of­tener drawn from him in pain, though some­times in ter­ror. My charger is ei­ther a prey to the beasts of the for­est, or he sees his dan­ger, with­out the power to avoid it. The sound might de­ceive me in the cav­ern, but in the open air I know it too well to be wrong.”

The scout and his com­pan­ions lis­tened to this sim­ple ex­pla­na­tion with the in­ter­est of men who im­bibe new ideas, at the same time that they get rid of old ones, which had proved dis­agree­able in­mates. The two lat­ter ut­tered their usual ex­pres­sive ex­cla­ma­tion, “hugh!” as the truth first glanced upon their minds, while the for­mer, af­ter a short, mus­ing pause, took upon him­self to re­ply.

“I can­not deny your words,” he said, “for I am lit­tle skilled in horses, though born where they abound. The wolves must be hov­er­ing above their heads on the bank, and the tim­o­r­some crea­tures are call­ing on man for help, in the best man­ner they are able. Un­cas”—he spoke in Delaware—“Un­cas, drop down in the ca­noe, and whirl a brand among the pack; or fear may do what the wolves can’t get at to per­form, and leave us with­out horses in the morn­ing, when we shall have so much need to jour­ney swiftly!”

The young na­tive had al­ready de­scended to the wa­ter to com­ply, when a long howl was raised on the edge of the river, and was borne swiftly off into the depths of the for­est, as though the beasts, of their own ac­cord, were aban­don­ing their prey in sud­den ter­ror. Un­cas, with in­stinc­tive quick­ness, re­ceded, and the three foresters held an­other of their low, earnest con­fer­ences.

“We have been like hunters who have lost the points of the heav­ens, and from whom the sun has been hid for days,” said Hawk­eye, turn­ing away from his com­pan­ions; “now we be­gin again to know the signs of our course, and the paths are cleared from briers! Seat your­selves in the shade which the moon throws from yon­der beech—’tis thicker than that of the pines—and let us wait for that which the Lord may choose to send next. Let all your con­ver­sa­tion be in whis­pers; though it would be bet­ter, and, per­haps, in the end, wiser, if each one held dis­course with his own thoughts, for a time.”

The man­ner of the scout was se­ri­ously im­pres­sive, though no longer dis­tin­guished by any signs of un­manly ap­pre­hen­sion. It was ev­i­dent that his mo­men­tary weak­ness had van­ished with the ex­pla­na­tion of a mys­tery which his own ex­pe­ri­ence had not served to fathom; and though he now felt all the re­al­i­ties of their ac­tual con­di­tion, that he was pre­pared to meet them with the en­ergy of his hardy na­ture. This feel­ing seemed also com­mon to the na­tives, who placed them­selves in po­si­tions which com­manded a full view of both shores, while their own per­sons were ef­fec­tu­ally con­cealed from ob­ser­va­tion. In such cir­cum­stances, com­mon pru­dence dic­tated that Hey­ward and his com­pan­ions should im­i­tate a cau­tion that pro­ceeded from so in­tel­li­gent a source. The young man drew a pile of the sas­safras from the cave, and plac­ing it in the chasm which sep­a­rated the two cav­erns, it was oc­cu­pied by the sis­ters, who were thus pro­tected by the rocks from any mis­siles, while their anx­i­ety was re­lieved by the as­sur­ance that no dan­ger could ap­proach with­out a warn­ing. Hey­ward him­self was posted at hand, so near that he might com­mu­ni­cate with his com­pan­ions with­out rais­ing his voice to a dan­ger­ous el­e­va­tion; while David, in im­i­ta­tion of the woods­men, be­stowed his per­son in such a man­ner among the fis­sures of the rocks, that his un­gainly limbs were no longer of­fen­sive to the eye.

In this man­ner hours passed with­out fur­ther in­ter­rup­tion. The moon reached the zenith, and shed its mild light per­pen­dic­u­larly on the lovely sight of the sis­ters slum­ber­ing peace­fully in each other’s arms. Dun­can cast the wide shawl of Cora be­fore a spec­ta­cle he so much loved to con­tem­plate, and then suf­fered his own head to seek a pil­low on the rock. David be­gan to ut­ter sounds that would have shocked his del­i­cate or­gans in more wake­ful mo­ments; in short, all but Hawk­eye and the Mo­hi­cans lost ev­ery idea of con­scious­ness, in un­con­trol­lable drowsi­ness. But the watch­ful­ness of these vig­i­lant pro­tec­tors nei­ther tired nor slum­bered. Im­mov­able as that rock, of which each ap­peared to form a part, they lay, with their eyes rov­ing, with­out in­ter­mis­sion, along the dark mar­gin of trees, that bounded the ad­ja­cent shores of the nar­row stream. Not a sound es­caped them; the most sub­tle ex­am­i­na­tion could not have told they breathed. It was ev­i­dent that this ex­cess of cau­tion pro­ceeded from an ex­pe­ri­ence that no sub­tlety on the part of their en­e­mies could de­ceive. It was, how­ever, con­tin­ued with­out any ap­par­ent con­se­quences, un­til the moon had set, and a pale streak above the tree­tops, at the bend of the river a lit­tle be­low, an­nounced the ap­proach of day.

Then, for the first time, Hawk­eye was seen to stir. He crawled along the rock and shook Dun­can from his heavy slum­bers.

“Now is the time to jour­ney,” he whis­pered; “awake the gen­tle ones, and be ready to get into the ca­noe when I bring it to the land­ing-place.”

“Have you had a quiet night?” said Hey­ward; “for my­self, I be­lieve sleep has got the bet­ter of my vig­i­lance.”

“All is yet still as mid­night. Be silent, but be quick.”

By this time Dun­can was thor­oughly awake, and he im­me­di­ately lifted the shawl from the sleep­ing fe­males. The mo­tion caused Cora to raise her hand as if to re­pulse him, while Alice mur­mured, in her soft, gen­tle voice, “No, no, dear fa­ther, we were not de­serted; Dun­can was with us!”

“Yes, sweet in­no­cence,” whis­pered the youth; “Dun­can is here, and while life con­tin­ues or dan­ger re­mains, he will never quit thee. Cora! Alice! awake! The hour has come to move!”

A loud shriek from the younger of the sis­ters, and the form of the other stand­ing up­right be­fore him, in be­wil­dered hor­ror, was the un­ex­pected an­swer he re­ceived.

While the words were still on the lips of Hey­ward, there had arisen such a tu­mult of yells and cries as served to drive the swift cur­rents of his own blood back from its bound­ing course into the foun­tains of his heart. It seemed, for near a minute, as if the demons of hell had pos­sessed them­selves of the air about them, and were vent­ing their sav­age hu­mors in bar­barous sounds. The cries came from no par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion, though it was ev­i­dent they filled the woods, and, as the ap­palled lis­ten­ers eas­ily imag­ined, the cav­erns of the falls, the rocks, the bed of the river, and the up­per air. David raised his tall per­son in the midst of the in­fer­nal din, with a hand on ei­ther ear, ex­claim­ing:

“Whence comes this dis­cord! Has hell broke loose, that man should ut­ter sounds like these!”

The bright flashes and the quick re­ports of a dozen ri­fles, from the op­po­site banks of the stream, fol­lowed this in­cau­tious ex­po­sure of his per­son, and left the un­for­tu­nate singing mas­ter sense­less on that rock where he had been so long slum­ber­ing. The Mo­hi­cans boldly sent back the in­tim­i­dat­ing yell of their en­e­mies, who raised a shout of sav­age tri­umph at the fall of Ga­mut. The flash of ri­fles was then quick and close be­tween them, but ei­ther party was too well skilled to leave even a limb ex­posed to the hos­tile aim. Dun­can lis­tened with in­tense anx­i­ety for the strokes of the pad­dle, be­liev­ing that flight was now their only refuge. The river glanced by with its or­di­nary ve­loc­ity, but the ca­noe was nowhere to be seen on its dark wa­ters. He had just fan­cied they were cru­elly de­serted by their scout, as a stream of flame is­sued from the rock be­neath them, and a fierce yell, blended with a shriek of agony, an­nounced that the mes­sen­ger of death sent from the fa­tal weapon of Hawk­eye, had found a vic­tim. At this slight re­pulse the as­sailants in­stantly with­drew, and grad­u­ally the place be­came as still as be­fore the sud­den tu­mult.

Dun­can seized the fa­vor­able mo­ment to spring to the body of Ga­mut, which he bore within the shel­ter of the nar­row chasm that pro­tected the sis­ters. In an­other minute the whole party was col­lected in this spot of com­par­a­tive safety.

“The poor fel­low has saved his scalp,” said Hawk­eye, coolly pass­ing his hand over the head of David; “but he is a proof that a man may be born with too long a tongue! ’Twas down­right mad­ness to show six feet of flesh and blood, on a naked rock, to the rag­ing sav­ages. I only won­der he has es­caped with life.”

“Is he not dead?” de­manded Cora, in a voice whose husky tones showed how pow­er­fully nat­u­ral hor­ror strug­gled with her as­sumed firm­ness. “Can we do aught to as­sist the wretched man?”

“No, no! the life is in his heart yet, and af­ter he has slept awhile he will come to him­self, and be a wiser man for it, till the hour of his real time shall come,” re­turned Hawk­eye, cast­ing an­other oblique glance at the in­sen­si­ble body, while he filled his charger with ad­mirable nicety. “Carry him in, Un­cas, and lay him on the sas­safras. The longer his nap lasts the bet­ter it will be for him, as I doubt whether he can find a proper cover for such a shape on these rocks; and singing won’t do any good with the Iro­quois.”

“You be­lieve, then, the at­tack will be re­newed?” asked Hey­ward.

“Do I ex­pect a hun­gry wolf will sat­isfy his crav­ing with a mouth­ful! They have lost a man, and ’tis their fash­ion, when they meet a loss, and fail in the sur­prise, to fall back; but we shall have them on again, with new ex­pe­di­ents to cir­cum­vent us, and mas­ter our scalps. Our main hope,” he con­tin­ued, rais­ing his rugged coun­te­nance, across which a shade of anx­i­ety just then passed like a dark­en­ing cloud, “will be to keep the rock un­til Munro can send a party to our help! God send it may be soon and un­der a leader that knows the In­dian cus­toms!”

“You hear our prob­a­ble for­tunes, Cora,” said Dun­can, “and you know we have ev­ery­thing to hope from the anx­i­ety and ex­pe­ri­ence of your fa­ther. Come, then, with Alice, into this cav­ern, where you, at least, will be safe from the mur­der­ous ri­fles of our en­e­mies, and where you may be­stow a care suited to your gen­tle na­tures on our un­for­tu­nate com­rade.”

The sis­ters fol­lowed him into the outer cave, where David was be­gin­ning, by his sighs, to give symp­toms of re­turn­ing con­scious­ness, and then com­mend­ing the wounded man to their at­ten­tion, he im­me­di­ately pre­pared to leave them.

“Dun­can!” said the tremu­lous voice of Cora, when he had reached the mouth of the cav­ern. He turned and be­held the speaker, whose color had changed to a deadly pale­ness, and whose lips quiv­ered, gaz­ing af­ter him, with an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est which im­me­di­ately re­called him to her side. “Re­mem­ber, Dun­can, how nec­es­sary your safety is to our own—how you bear a fa­ther’s sa­cred trust—how much de­pends on your dis­cre­tion and care—in short,” she added, while the tell­tale blood stole over her fea­tures, crim­son­ing her very tem­ples, “how very de­servedly dear you are to all of the name of Munro.”

“If any­thing could add to my own base love of life,” said Hey­ward, suf­fer­ing his un­con­scious eyes to wan­der to the youth­ful form of the silent Alice, “it would be so kind an as­sur­ance. As ma­jor of the Six­ti­eth, our hon­est host will tell you I must take my share of the fray; but our task will be easy; it is merely to keep these blood­hounds at bay for a few hours.”

Without wait­ing for a re­ply, he tore him­self from the pres­ence of the sis­ters, and joined the scout and his com­pan­ions, who still lay within the pro­tec­tion of the lit­tle chasm be­tween the two caves.

“I tell you, Un­cas,” said the for­mer, as Hey­ward joined them, “you are waste­ful of your pow­der, and the kick of the ri­fle dis­con­certs your aim! Lit­tle pow­der, light lead, and a long arm, sel­dom fail of bring­ing the death screech from a Mingo! At least, such has been my ex­pe­ri­ence with the crea­tur’s. Come, friends: let us to our cov­ers, for no man can tell when or where a Maqua12 will strike his blow.”

The In­di­ans silently re­paired to their ap­pointed sta­tions, which were fis­sures in the rocks, whence they could com­mand the ap­proaches to the foot of the falls. In the cen­ter of the lit­tle is­land, a few short and stunted pines had found root, form­ing a thicket, into which Hawk­eye darted with the swift­ness of a deer, fol­lowed by the ac­tive Dun­can. Here they se­cured them­selves, as well as cir­cum­stances would per­mit, among the shrubs and frag­ments of stone that were scat­tered about the place. Above them was a bare, rounded rock, on each side of which the wa­ter played its gam­bols, and plunged into the abysses be­neath, in the man­ner al­ready de­scribed. As the day had now dawned, the op­po­site shores no longer pre­sented a con­fused out­line, but they were able to look into the woods, and dis­tin­guish ob­jects be­neath a canopy of gloomy pines.

A long and anx­ious watch suc­ceeded, but with­out any fur­ther ev­i­dences of a re­newed at­tack; and Dun­can be­gan to hope that their fire had proved more fa­tal than was sup­posed, and that their en­e­mies had been ef­fec­tu­ally re­pulsed. When he ven­tured to ut­ter this im­pres­sion to his com­pan­ions, it was met by Hawk­eye with an in­cred­u­lous shake of the head.

“You know not the na­ture of a Maqua, if you think he is so eas­ily beaten back with­out a scalp!” he an­swered. “If there was one of the imps yelling this morn­ing, there were forty! and they know our num­ber and qual­ity too well to give up the chase so soon. Hist! look into the wa­ter above, just where it breaks over the rocks. I am no mor­tal, if the risky dev­ils haven’t swam down upon the very pitch, and, as bad luck would have it, they have hit the head of the is­land. Hist! man, keep close! or the hair will be off your crown in the turn­ing of a knife!”

Hey­ward lifted his head from the cover, and be­held what he justly con­sid­ered a prodigy of rash­ness and skill. The river had worn away the edge of the soft rock in such a man­ner as to ren­der its first pitch less abrupt and per­pen­dic­u­lar than is usual at wa­ter­falls. With no other guide than the rip­ple of the stream where it met the head of the is­land, a party of their in­sa­tiable foes had ven­tured into the cur­rent, and swam down upon this point, know­ing the ready ac­cess it would give, if suc­cess­ful, to their in­tended vic­tims.

As Hawk­eye ceased speak­ing, four hu­man heads could be seen peer­ing above a few logs of drift­wood that had lodged on these naked rocks, and which had prob­a­bly sug­gested the idea of the prac­ti­ca­bil­ity of the haz­ardous un­der­tak­ing. At the next mo­ment, a fifth form was seen float­ing over the green edge of the fall, a lit­tle from the line of the is­land. The sav­age strug­gled pow­er­fully to gain the point of safety, and, fa­vored by the glanc­ing wa­ter, he was al­ready stretch­ing forth an arm to meet the grasp of his com­pan­ions, when he shot away again with the shirling cur­rent, ap­peared to rise into the air, with up­lifted arms and start­ing eye­balls, and fell, with a sud­den plunge, into that deep and yawn­ing abyss over which he hov­ered. A sin­gle, wild, de­spair­ing shriek rose from the cav­ern, and all was hushed again as the grave.

The first gen­er­ous im­pulse of Dun­can was to rush to the res­cue of the hap­less wretch; but he felt him­self bound to the spot by the iron grasp of the im­mov­able scout.

“Would ye bring cer­tain death upon us, by telling the Min­goes where we lie?” de­manded Hawk­eye, sternly; “ ’Tis a charge of pow­der saved, and am­mu­ni­tion is as pre­cious now as breath to a wor­ried deer! Freshen the prim­ing of your pis­tols—the midst of the falls is apt to dampen the brim­stone—and stand firm for a close strug­gle, while I fire on their rush.”

He placed a fin­ger in his mouth, and drew a long, shrill whis­tle, which was an­swered from the rocks that were guarded by the Mo­hi­cans. Dun­can caught glimpses of heads above the scat­tered drift­wood, as this sig­nal rose on the air, but they dis­ap­peared again as sud­denly as they had glanced upon his sight. A low, rustling sound next drew his at­ten­tion be­hind him, and turn­ing his head, he be­held Un­cas within a few feet, creep­ing to his side. Hawk­eye spoke to him in Delaware, when the young chief took his po­si­tion with sin­gu­lar cau­tion and undis­turbed cool­ness. To Hey­ward this was a mo­ment of fever­ish and im­pa­tient sus­pense; though the scout saw fit to se­lect it as a fit oc­ca­sion to read a lec­ture to his more youth­ful as­so­ciates on the art of us­ing firearms with dis­cre­tion.

“Of all we’pons,” he com­menced, “the long bar­reled, true-grooved, soft-met­aled ri­fle is the most dan­ger­ous in skill­ful hands, though it wants a strong arm, a quick eye, and great judg­ment in charg­ing, to put forth all its beau­ties. The gun­smiths can have but lit­tle in­sight into their trade when they make their fowl­ing-pieces and short horse­men’s—”

He was in­ter­rupted by the low but ex­pres­sive “hugh!” of Un­cas.

“I see them, boy, I see them!” con­tin­ued Hawk­eye; “they are gath­er­ing for the rush, or they would keep their dingy backs be­low the logs. Well, let them,” he added, ex­am­in­ing his flint; “the lead­ing man cer­tainly comes on to his death, though it should be Mont­calm him­self!”

At that mo­ment the woods were filled with an­other burst of cries, and at the sig­nal four sav­ages sprang from the cover of the drift­wood. Hey­ward felt a burn­ing de­sire to rush for­ward to meet them, so in­tense was the deliri­ous anx­i­ety of the mo­ment; but he was re­strained by the de­lib­er­ate ex­am­ples of the scout and Un­cas.

When their foes, who had leaped over the black rocks that di­vided them, with long bounds, ut­ter­ing the wildest yells, were within a few rods, the ri­fle of Hawk­eye slowly rose among the shrubs, and poured out its fa­tal con­tents. The fore­most In­dian bounded like a stricken deer, and fell head­long among the clefts of the is­land.

“Now, Un­cas!” cried the scout, draw­ing his long knife, while his quick eyes be­gan to flash with ar­dor, “take the last of the screech­ing imps; of the other two we are sar­tain!”

He was obeyed; and but two en­e­mies re­mained to be over­come. Hey­ward had given one of his pis­tols to Hawk­eye, and to­gether they rushed down a lit­tle de­cliv­ity to­ward their foes; they dis­charged their weapons at the same in­stant, and equally with­out suc­cess.

“I know’d it! and I said it!” mut­tered the scout, whirling the de­spised lit­tle im­ple­ment over the falls with bit­ter dis­dain. “Come on, ye bloody minded hell­hounds! ye meet a man with­out a cross!”

The words were barely ut­tered, when he en­coun­tered a sav­age of gi­gan­tic stature, of the fiercest mien. At the same mo­ment, Dun­can found him­self en­gaged with the other, in a sim­i­lar con­test of hand to hand. With ready skill, Hawk­eye and his an­tag­o­nist each grasped that up­lifted arm of the other which held the dan­ger­ous knife. For near a minute they stood look­ing one an­other in the eye, and grad­u­ally ex­ert­ing the power of their mus­cles for the mas­tery.

At length, the tough­ened sinews of the white man pre­vailed over the less prac­ticed limbs of the na­tive. The arm of the lat­ter slowly gave way be­fore the in­creas­ing force of the scout, who, sud­denly wrest­ing his armed hand from the grasp of the foe, drove the sharp weapon through his naked bo­som to the heart. In the mean­time, Hey­ward had been pressed in a more deadly strug­gle. His slight sword was snapped in the first en­counter. As he was des­ti­tute of any other means of de­fense, his safety now de­pended en­tirely on bod­ily strength and res­o­lu­tion. Though de­fi­cient in nei­ther of these qual­i­ties, he had met an en­emy ev­ery way his equal. Hap­pily, he soon suc­ceeded in dis­arm­ing his ad­ver­sary, whose knife fell on the rock at their feet; and from this mo­ment it be­came a fierce strug­gle who should cast the other over the dizzy height into a neigh­bor­ing cav­ern of the falls. Every suc­ces­sive strug­gle brought them nearer to the verge, where Dun­can per­ceived the fi­nal and con­quer­ing ef­fort must be made. Each of the com­bat­ants threw all his en­er­gies into that ef­fort, and the re­sult was, that both tot­tered on the brink of the precipice. Hey­ward felt the grasp of the other at his throat, and saw the grim smile the sav­age gave, un­der the re­venge­ful hope that he hur­ried his en­emy to a fate sim­i­lar to his own, as he felt his body slowly yield­ing to a re­sist­less power, and the young man ex­pe­ri­enced the pass­ing agony of such a mo­ment in all its hor­rors. At that in­stant of ex­treme dan­ger, a dark hand and glanc­ing knife ap­peared be­fore him; the In­dian re­leased his hold, as the blood flowed freely from around the sev­ered ten­dons of the wrist; and while Dun­can was drawn back­ward by the sav­ing hand of Un­cas, his charmed eyes still were riv­eted on the fierce and dis­ap­pointed coun­te­nance of his foe, who fell sul­lenly and dis­ap­pointed down the ir­recov­er­able precipice.

“To cover! to cover!” cried Hawk­eye, who just then had despatched the en­emy; “to cover, for your lives! the work is but half ended!”

The young Mo­hi­can gave a shout of tri­umph, and fol­lowed by Dun­can, he glided up the ac­cliv­ity they had de­scended to the com­bat, and sought the friendly shel­ter of the rocks and shrubs.