k in the
settlements to change his finery."

The deliberate woodsman had little occasion to hunt for arguments to
enforce his advice. He was yet speaking when Duncan availed himself of
the water. In a moment every frightful or offensive mark was
obliterated, and the youth appeared again in the lineaments with which
he had been gifted by nature. Thus prepared for an interview with his
mistress, he took a hasty leave of his companion, and disappeared
through the indicated passage. The scout witnessed his departure with
complacency, nodding his head after him, and muttering his good wishes;
after which he very coolly set about an examination of the state of the
larder, among the Hurons--the cavern, among other purposes, being used
as a receptacle for the fruits of their hunts.

Duncan had no other guide than a distant glimmering light, which served,
however, the office of a polar star to the lover. By its aid he was
enabled to enter the haven of his hopes, which was merely another
apartment of the cavern, that had been solely appropriated to the
safe-keeping of so important a prisoner as a daughter of the commandant
of William Henry. It was profusely strewed with the plunder of that
unlucky fortress. In the midst of this confusion he found her he sought,
pale, anxious, and terrified, but lovely. David had prepared her for
such a visit.

"Duncan!" she exclaimed, in a voice that seemed to tremble at the sounds
created by itself.

"Alice" he answered, leaping carelessly among trunks, boxes, arms, and
furniture, until he stood at her side.

"I knew that you would never desert me," she said, looking up with a
momentary glow on her otherwise dejected countenance. "But you are
alone! grateful as it is to be thus remembered, I could wish to think
you are not entirely alone."

Duncan, observing that she trembled in a manner which betrayed her
inability to stand, gently induced her to be seated, while he recounted
those leading incidents which it has been our task to record. Alice
listened with breathless interest; and though the young man touched
lightly on the sorrows of the stricken father, taking care, however, not
to wound the self-love of his auditor, the tears ran as freely down the
cheeks of the daughter as though she had never wept before. The soothing
tenderness of Duncan, however, soon quieted the first burst of her
emotions, and she then heard him to the close with undivided attention,
if not with composure.

"