conveyed no conviction to her mind: from that moment, events were
pictured on her memory as the records of a feverish dream, including all
the incidents of her wild and hurried journey to the Indian village. But
with these broken and dream-like reminiscences, there were associated
recollections, vague, yet not the less terrifying, of a visage that had
haunted her presence by day and by night, throughout the whole journey,
watching, over her with the pertinacity of an evil genius; and which, as
her faculties woke slowly from their trance, assumed every moment a more
distinct and dreaded appearance in her imagination.

It was upon these hated features, seen side by side with the
blood-stained aspect of her kinsman, she now pondered in mingled grief
and terror; starting occasionally from the horror of her thoughts only to
be driven back to them again by the scowling eyes of the old crone; who,
still crouching over the fire, as if its warmth could never strike deep
enough into her frozen veins, watched every movement and every look with
the vigilance, and as it seemed, the viciousness of a serpent. No ray of
pity shone even for a moment from her forbidding, and even hideous
countenance; she offered no words, she made no signs, of sympathy; and,
as if to prove her hearty disregard, or profound contempt for the
prisoner's manifest distress, she by and by, to while the time, began to
drone out a succession of grunting sounds, such as make up a red-man's
melody, and such indeed as any village urchin can drum with his heels out
of an empty hogshead. The song, thus barbarously chanted, at first
startled and affrighted the captive; but its monotony had at last an
effect which the beldam was far from designing. It diverted the maiden's
mind in a measure from its own harassing thoughts, and thus introduced a
kind of composure where all had been before painful agitation. Nay, as
the sounds, which were at no time very loud, mingled with the piping of
the gale without and the rustling of the old elm at the door, they lost
their harshness, and were softened into a descant that was lulling to the
senses, and might, like a gentler nepenthe, have, in time, cheated the
over-weary mind to repose. Such, perhaps, was beginning to be its effect.
Edith ceased to bend upon the hag the wild, terrified looks that at first
rewarded the music; she sunk her head upon her bosom, and sat as if
gradually giving way to a lethargy of spirit, which, if not