female and a
young girl were seated. The females asked no questions, and expressed
no word indicative of curiosity or surprise, as the strong arm of the
Indian lifted his captive into the canoe, and made signs to the elder
squaw to push from the shore. When all had taken their places, the
woman, catching up a paddle from the bottom of the little vessel, stood
up, and with a few rapid strokes sent it skimming over the lake.

The miserable captive, overpowered with the sense of her calamitous
situation, bowed down her head upon her knees, and concealing her
agitated face in her garments, wept in silent agony. Visions of horror
presented themselves to her bewildered brain--all that Indiana had
described of the cruelty of this vindictive race, came vividly before
her mind. Poor child, what miserable thoughts were thine during that
brief voyage!

Had the Indians also captured her friends? or was she alone to be the
victim of their vengeance? What would be the feelings of those I beloved
ones on returning to their home and finding it desolate! Was there no
hope of release? As these ideas chased each other through her agitated
mind, she raised her eyes all streaming with tears to the faces of the
Indian and his companions with so piteous a look, that any heart but the
stoical one of an Indian would have softened at its sad appeal; but no
answering glance of sympathy met hers, no eye gave back its silent look
of pity--not a nerve or a muscle moved the cold apathetic features of
the Indians, and the woe-stricken girl again resumed her melancholy
attitude, burying her face in her heaving bosom to hide its bitter
emotions from the heartless strangers.

She was not folly aware that it is part of the Indian's education to
hide the inward feelings of the heart, to check all those soft and
tender emotions which distinguish the civilized man from the savage.

It does indeed need the softening influence of that powerful Spirit,
which was shed abroad into the world to turn the hearts of the
disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to break down the strongholds
of unrighteousness, and to teach man that he is by nature the child of
wrath and victim of sin, and that in his unregenerated nature his whole
mind is at enmity with God and his fellow-men, and that in his flesh
dwelleth no good thing. And the Indian has acknowledged that power,--he
has cast his idols of cruelty and revenge, those virtues on which he
prided himself in the blindn