hibited far more of the woman, and
consequently of the passions of the world. She had wept until her eyes
were swollen and red. Her cheeks were flushed and angry, and her whole
mien was distinguished by an air of spirit and resentment, that was not
a little, however, qualified by apprehensions for the future. In short,
there was that about the eye and step of the betrothed of Paul, which
gave a warranty that should happier times arrive, and the constancy of
the bee-hunter finally meet with its reward, he would possess a
partner every way worthy to cope with his own thoughtless and buoyant
temperament.

There was still another and a third figure in that little knot of
females. It was the youngest, the most highly gifted, and, until now,
the most favoured of the wives of the Teton. Her charms had not been
without the most powerful attraction in the eyes of her husband, until
they had so unexpectedly opened on the surpassing loveliness of a woman
of the Pale-faces. From that hapless moment the graces, the attachment,
the fidelity of the young Indian, had lost their power to please. Still
the complexion of Tachechana, though less dazzling than that of her
rival, was, for her race, clear and healthy. Her hazel eye had the
sweetness and playfulness of the antelope's; her voice was soft and
joyous as the song of the wren, and her happy laugh was the very melody
of the forest. Of all the Sioux girls, Tachechana (or the Fawn) was
the lightest-hearted and the most envied. Her father had been a
distinguished brave, and her brothers had already left their bones on a
distant and dreary war-path. Numberless were the warriors, who had sent
presents to the lodge of her parents, but none of them were listened to
until a messenger from the great Mahtoree had come. She was his third
wife, it is true, but she was confessedly the most favoured of them all.
Their union had existed but two short seasons, and its fruits now lay
sleeping at her feet, wrapped in the customary ligatures of skin and
bark, which form the swaddlings of an Indian infant.

At the moment, when Mahtoree and the trapper arrived at the opening of
the lodge, the young Sioux wife was seated on a simple stool, turning
her soft eyes, with looks that varied, like her emotions, with love and
wonder, from the unconscious child to those rare beings, who had
filled her youthful and uninstructed mind with so much admiration and
astonishment. Though Inez and Ellen had passed an ent