did not love me,--had never loved me as other
than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond
the pale of sentiment,--yet I had hoped this friendship-love would give
her leave to call upon me in her hour of need.

Was I the one to whom her message had been sped? Suddenly I remembered
what Richard had said; that the arrow was the Catawba's. If Uncanoola
were the bearer of the parchment, he would surely know to whom he had
been sent.

His burrow in the leaf bed chanced to be next to mine, and I could hear
his steady breathing, light and long-drawn, like that of some wild
creature--as, truly, he was--sleeping with all the senses alert to
spring awake at a touch or the snapping of a twig. A word would arouse
him, and a single question might resolve the doubt.

I thought of all this, and yet, when I would have wakened the Indian, a
shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. For while the
doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me,
making the little cry for help a token, not of love, perchance, but of
some dawning of forgiveness for my desperate wronging of her. And in
that hesitant moment it was borne in upon me that without this slender
chance for hope I should go mad and become a wretched witling at a time
when every faculty should be superhuman sharp and strong for spending in
her service.

So I forebore to wake the Indian; and following out this thought of
service fitness, would force myself to go to sleep and so to gather
fresh strength for the new day's measure.

XXI

HOW WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE

'Twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were I to try to
picture out at large the varied haps and hazards of our wanderings in
the savage wilderness. For the actors in any play the trivial details
have their place and meaning momentous enough, it may be; yet these are
often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax.

So, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest
ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper
and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes, yet always with the
plain-marked trail to guide us.

At times the march measured a full day's length amid the columned aisles
of the forest temple through lush green glades dank and steaming in the
August heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the
pine-trees. Anon it traced the crooked wi