ad twice purchased.

Notwithstanding both purchase and payment, the squatter might still
continue to hold his cabin and clearing--and share with me the disputed
land. Welcome should I make him, on one condition--the condition of
becoming his guest--constant or occasional--in either way, so long as I
might have the opportunity of enjoying the presence of his fair
daughter, and to her demonstrating my heart's devotion. Some such idea,
vaguely conceived, flitted across my mind, as I entered upon my second
journey to Mud Creek. My ostensible object was to take formal
possession of an estate, and turn out its original owner. But my heart
was in no unison with such an end. It recoiled from, or rather had it
forgotten, its purpose. Its throbbings were directed to a different
object: guiding me on a more joyful and auspicious errand--_the errand
of love_.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

A RED-SKINNED SIBYL.

Not a sound came from the forest to disturb my sweet musings. Silent
was the sky of the Indian summer--soft and balm-laden its breeze. The
trees stirred not; the branches seemed extended in the stillness of
repose; even the leaves of the _tremuloides_, hanging on their
compressed petioles, were scarcely seen to quiver. The rustling heard
at intervals, was but the fluttering of bright wings amid the foliage;
or the rushing of some mountebank squirrel in reckless evolution among
the branches--sounds harmonising with the scene. Not till I had entered
the glade was I aroused from my reverie--at first gently, by the sudden
emergence from shade into light; but afterwards in a more sensible
manner on sight of a human form--at a glance recognised as that of the
Indian maiden. She was seated, or rather reclining, against the
blanched log; her brown arm embracing an outstretched limb; half
supported on one leg--the other crossed carelessly over it in an
attitude of repose. Beside her on the log lay a wicker pannier, filled
with odds and ends of Indian manufacture.

Though I had risen close up to the girl, she vouchsafed no
acknowledgment of my presence. I observed no motion--not even of the
eyes; which, directed downwards, seemed fixed in steadfast gaze upon the
ground. Nothing about her appeared to move--save the coruscation of
metallic ornaments that glittered in the sun, as though her body were
enveloped in scale-armour. Otherwise, she might have been mistaken for
a statue in bronze. And one, too, of noble proport