or of the rich blood, that seemed
ready to burst its bounds. And yet there was neither coarseness nor
want of shadowing in a countenance that was exquisitely regular, and
dignified and surpassingly beautiful. She smiled, as if in pity at her
own momentary forgetfulness, discovering by the act a row of teeth that
would have shamed the purest ivory; when, replacing the veil, she bowed
her face, and rode in silence, like one whose thoughts were abstracted
from the scene around her.

CHAPTER 2

"Sola, sola, wo ha, ho, sola!"
--Shakespeare

While one of the lovely beings we have so cursorily presented to the
reader was thus lost in thought, the other quickly recovered from the
alarm which induced the exclamation, and, laughing at her own weakness,
she inquired of the youth who rode by her side:

"Are such specters frequent in the woods, Heyward, or is this sight an
especial entertainment ordered on our behalf? If the latter, gratitude
must close our mouths; but if the former, both Cora and I shall have
need to draw largely on that stock of hereditary courage which we boast,
even before we are made to encounter the redoubtable Montcalm."

"Yon Indian is a 'runner' of the army; and, after the fashion of his
people, he may be accounted a hero," returned the officer. "He has
volunteered to guide us to the lake, by a path but little known,
sooner than if we followed the tardy movements of the column; and, by
consequence, more agreeably."

"I like him not," said the lady, shuddering, partly in assumed, yet more
in real terror. "You know him, Duncan, or you would not trust yourself
so freely to his keeping?"

"Say, rather, Alice, that I would not trust you. I do know him, or he
would not have my confidence, and least of all at this moment. He
is said to be a Canadian too; and yet he served with our friends the
Mohawks, who, as you know, are one of the six allied nations. He was
brought among us, as I have heard, by some strange accident in which
your father was interested, and in which the savage was rigidly dealt
by; but I forget the idle tale, it is enough, that he is now our
friend."

"If he has been my father's enemy, I like him still less!" exclaimed the
now really anxious girl. "Will you not speak to him, Major Heyward, that
I may hear his tones? Foolish though it may be, you have often heard me
avow my faith in the tones of the human voice!"

"It would be in vain; and answered, most probably, by a