g in some degree for the
additional toil of the march, by the sense of security they imparted. At
length the party began slowly to climb 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 meagre
herbage of that elevated region.

"Go," he said, "and seek your food where natur' gives it 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 towards
the eastern brow of the mountain, whither he beckoned for the whole
party to follow; "if it was as easy to look into the heart of man as it
is to spy out the nakedness of Montcalm's camp from this spot,
hypocrites would grow scarce, and the cunning of a Mingo might prove a
losing game, compared to the honesty of a Delaware."

When the travellers reached the verge of the precipice, they saw, at a
glance, the truth of the scout's declaration, and the admirable
foresight with which he had led them to their commanding station.

The mountain on which they stood, elevated, perhaps, a thousand feet in
the air, was a high cone that rose a little in advance of that range
which stretches for miles along the western shores of the lake, until
meeting its sister piles, beyond the water, it ran off towards the
Canadas, in confused and broken masses of rock, thinly sprinkled with
evergreens. Immediately at the feet of the party, the southern shore of
the Horican swept in a broad semicircle, from mountain to mountain,
marking a wide strand, that soon rose into an u