ole furtive glances at its
appalling dreariness. They looked in vain for the form they had so
recently seen stalking along in silent shores, while a low and regular
wash of the little waves, by announcing that the waters were not yet
subsided, furnished a frightful memorial of the deed of blood they had
just witnessed. Like all that passing and gloomy scene, the low basin,
however, quickly melted in the darkness, and became blended with the
mass of black objects in the rear of the travelers.

Hawkeye soon deviated from the line of their retreat, and striking off
towards the mountains which form the western boundary of the narrow
plain, he led his followers, with swift steps, deep within the shadows
that were cast from their high and broken summits. The route was now
painful; lying over ground ragged with rocks, and intersected with
ravines, and their progress proportionately slow. Bleak and black
hills lay on every side of them, compensating in some degree for the
additional toil of the march by the sense of security they imparted. At
length the party began slowly to rise a steep and rugged ascent, by a
path that curiously wound among rocks and trees, avoiding the one and
supported by the other, in a manner that showed it had been devised by
men long practised in the arts of the wilderness. As they gradually rose
from the level of the valleys, the thick darkness which usually precedes
the approach of day began to disperse, and objects were seen in the
plain and palpable colors with which they had been gifted by nature.
When they issued from the stunted woods which clung to the barren sides
of the mountain, upon a flat and mossy rock that formed its summit, they
met the morning, as it came blushing above the green pines of a hill
that lay on the opposite side of the valley of the Horican.

The scout now told the sisters to dismount; and taking the bridles from
the mouths, and the saddles off the backs of the jaded beasts, he turned
them loose, to glean a scanty subsistence among the shrubs and meager
herbage of that elevated region.

"Go," he said, "and seek your food where natur' gives it to you; and
beware that you become not food to ravenous wolves yourselves, among
these hills."

"Have we no further need of them?" demanded Heyward.

"See, and judge with your own eyes," said the scout, advancing toward
the eastern brow of the mountain, whither he beckoned for the whole
party to follow; "if it was as easy to look