morning.

The dark cloud of the night had passed over. The voice of the tempest
was hushed. The day broke clear and cloudless, amid the singing of
birds, and the quickened music of the swollen stream. The first thought
of the Athapuscow chief, as he started from his troubled slumbers, was
of his captive. But she was gone. With a shrill and angry whoop, he
roused the whole band, and all started in pursuit. The old woods rung
again with the whoop and yell of the pursuers, and were answered by the
sullen echoes of the hills and cliffs around. But neither wood, nor
hill, nor cliff, revealed the hiding-place of the captive. The heavy
torrents of rain had obliterated every mark of her footsteps, and
neither grass, nor sand, nor the yielding soil of the river-bank
afforded any clue to the path she had taken.

Safe in the close covert of her new found retreat, the poor captive
heard all the loud and angry threats of her disappointed pursuers. She
even heard their frequent conjectures and animated discussions of the
means to be adopted for her recovery, and often, they were so near to
her place of refuge, that she could see their anxious and angry looks,
as they passed, and almost feel their hands among the bushes that
sheltered her, and the quick tramp of their feet over the roof of her
cave. But there was no track or mark, on land or water, to guide them to
that spot, and so naturally had every leaf been adjusted, that it had
not attracted a single suspicion from any one of those sagacious and
quick-sighted inquisitors.

Two hours of fruitless search for a hiding place, or a track that should
reveal the course of her flight, brought them to the conclusion that the
Great Spirit had taken her away, and that it was not for man to find her
path again. With this conviction, they struck their tents, swam the
stream, and resumed their march to the south.

Too cautious to leave her covert at once, and wearied with her anxious
watchings, Tula composed herself to sleep, as soon as the last sound of
the retiring party died on her ear. The sun had declined half way to his
setting, when she awoke. She listened, with a suspicions ear for every
sound without. The singing of birds, the rustling of the leaves, and the
murmur of the waters, were all that disturbed the silence of the scene.
She put her ear to the rock, but it brought nothing to her sense that
revealed the presence of man. With extreme caution, she ventured to look
out from