e cane-brake into fields. And soon the ploughs were
running. Oh, it was spring in this loveliest of regions, in this climate
of garnered delights! As the silvery sycamore trees, leaning over the
glittering reaches of the slate-blue river, put forth the first green
leaves, of the daintiest vernal hue, Odalie loved to gaze through them
from the door of the cabin, perchance to note an eagle wing its splendid
flight above the long, rippling white flashes of the current; or a
canoe, as swift, as light, cleave the denser medium of the water; or in
the stillness of the noon a deer lead down a fawn to drink. She was wont
to hear the mocking-bird pour forth his thrilling ecstasy of song, the
wild bee drone, and in the distance the muffled booming thunder of the
herds of buffalo. Who so quick to see the moon, this vernal
moon,--surely not some old dead world of lost history, and burnt-out
hopes, and destroyed utilities, but fair of face, virginal and fresh as
the spring itself,--come down the river in the sweet dusk, slowly,
softly, pace by pace, ethereally refulgent, throwing sparse shadows of
the newly leaved sycamore boughs far up the slope, across the threshold
that she loved, with the delicate traceries of this similitude of the
roof-tree.

"Oh, this is home! home!" she often exclaimed, clasping her hands, and
looking out in a sort of solemn delight.

"Why don't you say that in French, Odalie?" Hamish would mischievously
ask. For his researches into the mysteries of the French language,
although not extensive, had sufficed to acquaint him with the fact that
the tongue has no equivalent for this word, and to furnish him with this
home-thrust, as it were. Odalie, always rising with spirit to the
occasion, would immediately inquire if he had seen or heard of Savanukah
lately, and affect to be reminded to urge him to put himself in
preparation to be able to stand an examination in French by that
linguistic authority by conjugating the reflective verb _S'amuser_. "So
much you might, Hamish, _amuse yourself_ with Savanukah."

"I am not disturbed, now," Hamish would declare, "since we have made
interest with the family. I'd just get your friend, Mrs. Savanukah, to
intercede for me."

For Odalie had to run the gauntlet of a good deal of merriment in the
family circle because of her close acquaintance with the Indian women.
Their visits annoyed her extremely. If she went for an afternoon's talk
with Belinda Rush,--the two had bec