pretation of her sorrow, and motioned to her, once
more, to close her eyes, and pointed up at the skies, where Orion was
unsheathing his glittering blade above the eastern mountains--a warning
that the night was well-nigh spent and a chill day of early December on
the way. And it seemed only an inappreciable interval of time before
Odalie opened her eyes again, upon a crimson dawn, with the rime white
on the sparse red and brown leaves and bare boughs; to see breakfast
cooking under Hamish's ministrations; to see Fifine washing the cat's
face with fresh water from the spring--very cold it was, as Fifine
herself found it, when it came her turn to try it herself and cry
"_Quelle barbarie!_"--to see the Indians getting a party to horse to go
back and search for one of their number, who had become separated in
some way; to see poor Hamish's face pale with fear and consciousness,
and then harden with resolution to meet the worst like a man.

At length they set forth in the frosty dawn of a new day, changing their
route and making their progress further southward along untried ways she
had never thought to travel. The sun came grandly up; the mountain
range, wooded to the summit, flaunted in splendid array, red, and
yellow, and even purple, with the heavy growths of the sweet-gum trees,
and their wealth of lingering foliage. Here and there, along the
heights, grim crags showed their beetling precipices, and where the
leaves had fallen, covering great slopes with russet hues, the bare
boles and branches of the forest rose frosted with fine lace-like
effects. Sometimes, with a wild woodland call and a flash of white foam,
a cataract dashed down the valley. The feeding deer lifted their heads
to gaze after the party with evanescent curiosity and then fell to
quietly grazing again: they had not known enough of man to acquire a
fear of him. Sometimes arose the bellowing of distant herds of buffalo,
filling the Cumberland spurs and coves with a wonted sound, to which
they have now long been strangers.

Wild turkey, quail, wild duck, wild geese, the latter already beginning
their southward migration, were as abundant, one might say, as leaves on
the trees or on the ground. There were trout of the finest flavor in
these mountain streams, and one might call for what one would for
dinner. If one cared for sweets there was honey in the honeycomb in
almost any hollow tree, where the wild bees worked and the bear
profited; and for fruit