ttling down with noisy splash upon the calm
water. The shores, too, were covered with these birds, feeding on the
fallen acorns which fell ripe and brown with every passing breeze; the
berries of the dogwood also furnished them with food; but the wild rice
seemed the great attraction, and small shell-fish and the larvae of
many insects that had been dropped into the waters, there to come to
perfection in due season, or to form a provision for myriads of wild
fowl that had come from the far north-west to feed upon them, guided by
that instinct which has so beautifully been termed by one of our modern
poetesses, "God's gift to the weak" _[FN: Mrs. Southey.]_

CHAPTER VIII.

"Oh, come and hear what cruel wrongs Befel the Dark Ladye."--COLERIDGE.

THE Mohawk girl was in high spirits at the coming of the wild fowl to
the lake; she would clap her hands and laugh with almost childish glee
as she looked at them darkening the lake like clouds resting on its
surface.

"If I had but my father's gun, his good old gun, now!" would Hector say,
as he eyed the timorous flocks as they rose and fell upon the lake; "but
these foolish birds are so shy, that they are away before an arrow can
reach them."

Indiana smiled in her quiet way; she was busy filling the canoe with
green boughs, which she arranged so as completely to transform the
little vessel into the semblance of a floating island of evergreen;
within this bower she motioned Hector to crouch down, leaving a small
space for the free use of his bow, while concealed at the prow she
gently and noiselessly paddled the canoe from the shore among the
rice-beds, letting it remain stationary or merely rocking to and fro
with the undulatory motion of the waters. The unsuspecting birds,
deceived into full security, eagerly pursued their pastime or their
prey, and it was no difficult matter for the hidden archer to hit many a
black duck or teal or whistlewing, as it floated securely on the placid
water, or rose to shift its place a few yards up or down the stream.
Soon the lake around was strewed with the feathered game, which Wolfe,
cheered on by Lewis, who was stationed on the shore, brought to land.

Indiana told Hector that this was the season when the Indians made great
gatherings on the lake for duck-shooting, which they pursued much after
the same fashion as that which has been described, only instead of one,
a dozen or more canoes would be thus disguised with boughs, with