the gratitude to the Almighty Disposer
of Events which glowed in the bosoms of the sisters, who were thus
unexpectedly restored to life and to each other. Their thanksgivings
were deep and silent; the offerings of their gentle spirits burning
brightest and purest on the secret altars of their hearts; and their
renovated and more earthly feelings exhibiting themselves in long and
fervent though speechless caresses. As Alice rose from her knees, where
she had sunk by the side of Cora, she threw herself on the bosom of the
latter, and sobbed aloud the name of their aged father, while her soft,
dove-like eyes, sparkled with the rays of hope.

"We are saved! we are saved!" she murmured; "to return to the arms of
our dear, dear father, and his heart will not be broken with grief. And
you, too, Cora, my sister, my more than sister, my mother; you, too,
are spared. And Duncan," she added, looking round upon the youth with a
smile of ineffable innocence, "even our own brave and noble Duncan has
escaped without a hurt."

To these ardent and nearly innocent words Cora made no other answer than
by straining the youthful speaker to her heart, as she bent over her
in melting tenderness. The manhood of Heyward felt no shame in dropping
tears over this spectacle of affectionate rapture; and Uncas stood,
fresh and blood-stained from the combat, a calm, and, apparently, an
unmoved looker-on, it is true, but with eyes that had already lost their
fierceness, and were beaming with a sympathy that elevated him far
above the intelligence, and advanced him probably centuries before, the
practises of his nation.

During this display of emotions so natural in their situation, Hawkeye,
whose vigilant distrust had satisfied itself that the Hurons, who
disfigured the heavenly scene, no longer possessed the power to
interrupt its harmony, approached David, and liberated him from the
bonds he had, until that moment, endured with the most exemplary
patience.

"There," exclaimed the scout, casting the last withe behind him, "you
are once more master of your own limbs, though you seem not to use them
with much greater judgment than that in which they were first fashioned.
If advice from one who is not older than yourself, but who, having
lived most of his time in the wilderness, may be said to have experience
beyond his years, will give no offense, you are welcome to my thoughts;
and these are, to part with the little tooting instrument in your jack