and if nothing offers, we must go back to the plain and strike another
scent. Move on, Uncas, and keep your eyes on the dried leaves. I will
watch the bushes, while your father shall run with a low nose to the
ground. Move on, friends; the sun is getting behind the hills."

"Is there nothing that I can do?" demanded the anxious Heyward.

"You!" repeated the scout, who, with his red friends, was already
advancing in the order he had prescribed; "yes, you can keep in our
rear, and be careful not to cross the trail."

Before they had proceeded many rods, the Indians stopped, and appeared
to gaze at some signs on the earth, with more than their usual keenness.
Both father and son spoke quick and loud, now looking at the object of
their mutual admiration, and now regarding each other with the most
unequivocal pleasure.

"They have found the little foot!" exclaimed the scout, moving forward,
without attending further to his own portion of the duty. "What have we
here? An ambushment has been planted in the spot? No, by the truest
rifle on the frontiers, here have been them one-sided horses again! Now
the whole secret is out, and all is plain as the north star at midnight.
Yes, here they have mounted. There the beasts have been bound to a
sapling, in waiting; and yonder runs the broad path away to the north,
in full sweep for the Canadas."

"But still there are no signs of Alice--of the younger Miss
Munro,"--said Duncan.

"Unless the shining bauble Uncas has just lifted from the ground should
prove one. Pass it this way, lad, that we may look at it."

Heyward instantly knew it for a trinket that Alice was fond of wearing,
and which he recollected, with the tenacious memory of a lover, to have
seen, on the fatal morning of the massacre, dangling from the fair neck
of his mistress. He seized the highly prized jewel; and as he proclaimed
the fact, it vanished from the eyes of the wondering scout, who in vain
looked for it on the ground, long after it was warmly pressed against
the beating heart of Duncan.

"Pshaw!" said the disappointed Hawkeye, ceasing to rake the leaves with
the breech of his rifle; "'tis a certain sign of age, when the sight
begins to weaken. Such a glittering gewgaw, and not to be seen! Well,
well, I can squint along a clouded barrel yet, and that is enough to
settle all disputes between me and the Mingos. I should like to find the
thing too, if it were only to carry it to the right owner, and that
w