thought of disturbing a mass of brush, which all
of them believed, in that moment of hurry and confusion, had been
accidentally raised by the hands of their own party.

As the blankets yielded before the outward pressure, and the branches
settled in the fissure of the rock by their own weight, forming a
compact body, Duncan once more breathed freely. With a light step and
lighter heart, he returned to the center of the cave, and took the
place he had left, where he could command a view of the opening next the
river. While he was in the act of making this movement, the Indians, as
if changing their purpose by a common impulse, broke away from the chasm
in a body, and were heard rushing up the island again, toward the point
whence they had originally descended. Here another wailing cry betrayed
that they were again collected around the bodies of their dead comrades.

Duncan now ventured to look at his companions; for, during the most
critical moments of their danger, he had been apprehensive that the
anxiety of his countenance might communicate some additional alarm to
those who were so little able to sustain it.

"They are gone, Cora!" he whispered; "Alice, they are returned whence
they came, and we are saved! To Heaven, that has alone delivered us from
the grasp of so merciless an enemy, be all the praise!"

"Then to Heaven will I return my thanks!" exclaimed the younger sister,
rising from the encircling arm of Cora, and casting herself with
enthusiastic gratitude on the naked rock; "to that Heaven who has spared
the tears of a gray-headed father; has saved the lives of those I so
much love."

Both Heyward and the more temperate Cora witnessed the act of
involuntary emotion with powerful sympathy, the former secretly
believing that piety had never worn a form so lovely as it had now
assumed in the youthful person of Alice. Her eyes were radiant with the
glow of grateful feelings; the flush of her beauty was again seated on
her cheeks, and her whole soul seemed ready and anxious to pour out its
thanksgivings through the medium of her eloquent features. But when her
lips moved, the words they should have uttered appeared frozen by some
new and sudden chill. Her bloom gave place to the paleness of death;
her soft and melting eyes grew hard, and seemed contracting with horror;
while those hands, which she had raised, clasped in each other, toward
heaven, dropped in horizontal lines before her, the fingers pointed
forw