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 centre 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
cavern in a body, and were heard rushing up the island again, towards
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 arms 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 tempered 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 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, towards
heaven, dropped in horizontal lines before her, the fingers pointed
forward in convulsed motion. Heyward turned, the instant she gave a
direction to his suspicions, and, peering just above the ledge which
formed the threshold of the open outlet of the cavern, he beheld the
malignant, fierce, and savage features of Le Renard Subtil.