man's shade still pursues the
forest herd, or clasps to his bosom the forms of the sunny-eyed
maidens of his own clime; and the green and happy isles where the
Huron lovers reside, and the frozen and verdureless heath appointed to
the cowards of all the earth. When he had exhausted these subjects, he
related to the warrior many traditions of the old time, tales of
forest love, and of the valour of the men of ancient days. He
continued to visit the lodge of the chief every night for the space of
a moon, entertaining him, with the same fixed and lustreless eye, and
in the same hoarse tone, with these old tales. The Little White Bear
of the Iroquois locked up those things in the great store-house of his
memory, and each day, when the sun returned to the earth, and with it
the ghost of the ancient man had departed, he related to his wondering
tribe the traditions poured into his ear by the phantom warrior. And
this was the first.

* * * * *

The moon was shining brightly on tree and flower, on glade and river,
on land and water; stars were twinkling, and the winds slept in the
caverns of the earth, when a youth and a maiden--he, tall and straight
as a forest tree; fierce as a panther to his enemies, but gentle as a
kid to those he loved; she, little in stature as a sprout of a single
season, but the mildest and most beautiful of all mortal things--came
out of the forest. The horse upon whose back they had escaped from
their enemies lay exhausted at the verge of the wood, and now they
stood alone by the river of silver.

"Here rest thee, my beloved," said the youth, "we are safe. Our good
steed has sped like an arrow through the thicket; our pursuers, my
rival, thy father, thy brother, and all thy tribe, lie foiled and
fainting far behind us. There is no longer footfall or shout in the
wind; the voices of angry men, calling the Algonquin by names he never
owned and whose ignominy he may not avenge, have long since expired on
our ears like the voice of a dying cloud in the Moon of Thunder. Rest
thee, my beloved!--as a young bird that is weary of flying reposes on
the bough of a tree till its faintness has passed away, so must thou
lie down on the green and verdant bank till thy strength returns. I go
to yonder river, to seek a bark to bear us away to the lands of my
nation, and to my pleasant cabin by the stream where I first drew
breath." And he rose to go.

"Oh leave me not!" cried the ma