the _vis inertiae_ of
so large a mass; for, once in motion, it was easy to cause the scow to
skim the water with all the necessary speed.

"Pull, Deerslayer, for heaven's sake!" cried Judith, again at the loop.
"These wretches rush into the water like hounds following their prey!
Ah! The scow moves! and now the water deepens to the armpits of the
foremost; still they rush forward and will seize the ark!"

A slight scream and then a joyous laugh followed from the girl; the
first produced by a desperate effort of their pursuers, and the last by
its failure, the scow, which had now got fairly in motion, gliding
ahead into deep water with a velocity that set the designs of their
enemies at naught. As the two men were prevented by the position of
the cabin from seeing what passed astern, they were compelled to
inquire of the girls into the state of the chase.

"What now, Judith?--what next? Do the Mingoes still follow, or are we
quit of 'em for the present?" demanded Deerslayer when he felt the rope
yielding, as if the scow was going fast ahead, and heard the scream and
the laugh of the girl almost in the same breath.

"They have vanished!--one, the last, is just burying himself in the
bushes of the bank--there! he has disappeared in the shadows of the
trees! You have got your friend and we are all safe!"

[1] Otsego Lake.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

TO A WATERFOWL.

Whither, 'midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast--
The desert and illimitable air--
Lone wandering but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon, that toil shall end;
Soon, shalt thou find a summer home and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk