in broken English to Heyward,
who, in his turn, spoke to the stranger; at once interrupting, and, for
the time, closing his musical efforts.

"Though we are not in danger, common prudence would teach us to journey
through this wilderness in as quiet a manner as possible. You will then,
pardon me, Alice, should I diminish your enjoyments, by requesting this
gentleman to postpone his chant until a safer opportunity."

"You will diminish them, indeed," returned the arch girl; "for never did
I hear a more unworthy conjunction of execution and language than that
to which I have been listening; and I was far gone in a learned inquiry
into the causes of such an unfitness between sound and sense, when you
broke the charm of my musings by that bass of yours, Duncan!"

"I know not what you call my bass," said Heyward, piqued at her remark,
"but I know that your safety, and that of Cora, is far dearer to me than
could be any orchestra of Handel's music." He paused and turned his head
quickly toward a thicket, and then bent his eyes suspiciously on their
guide, who continued his steady pace, in undisturbed gravity. The young
man smiled to himself, for he believed he had mistaken some shining
berry of the woods for the glistening eyeballs of a prowling savage, and
he rode forward, continuing the conversation which had been interrupted
by the passing thought.

Major Heyward was mistaken only in suffering his youthful and generous
pride to suppress his active watchfulness. The cavalcade had not long
passed, before the branches of the bushes that formed the thicket were
cautiously moved asunder, and a human visage, as fiercely wild as savage
art and unbridled passions could make it, peered out on the retiring
footsteps of the travelers. A gleam of exultation shot across the
darkly-painted lineaments of the inhabitant of the forest, as he traced
the route of his intended victims, who rode unconsciously onward, the
light and graceful forms of the females waving among the trees, in the
curvatures of their path, followed at each bend by the manly figure of
Heyward, until, finally, the shapeless person of the singing master
was concealed behind the numberless trunks of trees, that rose, in dark
lines, in the intermediate space.

CHAPTER 3

"Before these fields were shorn and till'd,
Full to the brim our rivers flow'd;
The melody of waters fill'd
The fresh and boundless wood;
And torrents dash'd, and ri