with a
spoon of the same material, but with a negligence and slovenliness that
betrayed her almost utter unconsciousness of the action.

At the further side of the tent there was another woman, even more
delicate in appearance than the one last mentioned. She, too, was
blue-eyed, and of surpassing fairness of skin. Her attitude denoted a
mind too powerfully absorbed in grief to be heedful of appearances; for
she sat with her knees drawn up to her chin, and rocking her body to
and fro with an undulating motion that seemed to have its origin in no
effort of volition of her own. Her long fair hair hung negligently over
her shoulders; and a blanket drawn over the top of her head like a
veil, and extending partly over the person, disclosed here and there
portions of an apparel which was strictly European, although rent, and
exhibiting in various places stains of blood. A bowl similar to that of
her companion, and filled with the same food, was at her side; but this
was untasted.

"Why does the girl refuse to eat?" asked the warrior of her next him,
as he fiercely rolled a volume of smoke from his lips. "Make her eat,
for I would speak to her afterwards."

"Why does the girl refuse to eat?" responded the woman in the same
tone, dropping her spoon as she spoke, and turning to the object of
remark with a vacant look. "It is good," she pursued, as she rudely
shook the arm of the heedless sufferer. "Come, girl, eat."

A shriek burst from the lips of the unhappy girl, as, apparently roused
from her abstraction, she suffered the blanket to fall from her head,
and staring wildly at her questioner, faintly demanded,--

"Who, in the name of mercy, are you, who address me in this horrid
place in my own tongue? Speak; who are you? Surely I should know that
voice for that of Ellen, the wife of Frank Halloway!"

A maniac laugh was uttered by the wretched woman. This continued
offensively for a moment; and she observed, in an infuriated tone and
with a searching eye,--"No, I am not the wife of Halloway. It is false.
I am the wife of Wacousta. This is my husband!" and as she spoke she
sprang nimbly to her feet, and was in the next instant lying prostrate
on the form of the warrior; her arms thrown wildly around him, and her
lips imprinting kisses on his cheek.

But Wacousta was in no mood to suffer her endearments. He for the first
time seemed alive to the presence of her who lay beyond, and, to whose
whole appearance a character o