ou and
speak these strangers."

The Tuscarora assented without difficulty, and again he directed his
patient and submissive little wife, who seldom turned her full rich
black eye on him but to express equally her respect, her dread, and
her love, to proceed to the boat. But here Magnet raised a difficulty.
Although spirited, and of unusual energy under circumstances of trial,
she was but woman; and the idea of being entirely deserted by her two
male protectors, in the midst of a wilderness that her senses had just
told her was seemingly illimitable, became so keenly painful, that she
expressed a wish to accompany her uncle.

"The exercise will be a relief, dear sir, after sitting so long in the
canoe," she added, as the rich blood slowly returned to a cheek that had
paled in spite of her efforts to be calm; "and there may be females with
the strangers."

"Come, then, child; it is but a cable's length, and we shall return an
hour before the sun sets."

With this permission, the girl, whose real name was Mabel Dunham,
prepared to be of the party; while the Dew-of-June, as the wife of
Arrowhead was called, passively went her way towards the canoe, too much
accustomed to obedience, solitude, and the gloom of the forest to feel
apprehension.

The three who remained in the wind-row now picked their way around its
tangled maze, and gained the margin of the woods. A few glances of the
eye sufficed for Arrowhead; but old Cap deliberately set the smoke by
a pocket-compass, before he trusted himself within the shadows of the
trees.

"This steering by the nose, Magnet, may do well enough for an Indian,
but your thoroughbred knows the virtue of the needle," said the uncle,
as he trudged at the heels of the light-stepping Tuscarora. "America
would never have been discovered, take my word for it, if Columbus had
been nothing but nostrils. Friend Arrowhead, didst ever see a machine
like this?"

The Indian turned, cast a glance at the compass, which Cap held in a
way to direct his course, and gravely answered, "A pale-face eye. The
Tuscarora see in his head. The Salt-water (for so the Indian styled his
companion) all eye now; no tongue."

"He means, uncle, that we had needs be silent, perhaps he distrusts the
persons we are about to meet."

"Ay, 'tis an Indian's fashion of going to quarters. You perceive he has
examined the priming of his rifle, and it may be as well if I look to
that of my own pistols."

Without betrayin