had exposed to
perish by hunger and thirst on Bare Hill, and much their interest was
excited to know by what means Catharine had become possessed of a dress
wrought by the hand of one whom they had numbered with the dead. Strange
and mysterious did it seem to them, and warily did they watch the
unconscious object of their wonder.

The knowledge that she possessed of the language of her friend Indiana,
enabled Catharine to comprehend a great deal of what was said; yet she
prudently refrained from speaking in the tongue of one, to whose
whole nation she knew these people to be hostile, but she sedulously
endeavoured to learn their own peculiar dialect, and in this she
succeeded in an incredibly short time, so that she was soon able to
express her own wants, and converse a little with the females who were
about her.

She had noticed that among the tents there was one which stood
apart from the rest, and was only visited by the old chief and his
granddaughter, or by the elder women. At first she imagined it was some
sick person, or a secret tent set apart for the worship of the Great
Spirit; but one day when the chief of the people had gone up the river
hunting, and the children were asleep, she perceived the curtain of
skins drawn back, and a female of singular and striking beauty appeared
standing in the open space in front. She was habited in a fine tunic of
white dressed doeskin richly embroidered with coloured beads and stained
quills, a full petticoat of dark cloth bound with scarlet descended
to her ancles, leggings fringed with deer-skin knotted with bands of
coloured quills, with richly wrought mocassins on her feet. On her
head she wore a coronet of scarlet and black feathers; her long shining
tresses of raven hair descended to her waist, each thick tress confined
with a braided band of quills dyed scarlet and blue; her stature was
tall and well-formed; her large, liquid, dark eye wore an expression so
proud and mournful that Catharine felt her own involuntarily fill with
tears as she gazed upon this singular being. She would have approached
nearer to her, but a spell seemed on her; she shrunk back timid and
abashed beneath that wild melancholy glance. It was she, the Beam of the
Morning, the self-made widow of the young Mohawk, whose hand had wrought
so fearful a vengeance on the treacherous destroyer of her brother. She
stood there, at the tent door, arrayed in her bridal robes, as on the
day when she receive