n a moment had disappeared. Rosa had no
choice but to follow. Whilst making her way through the innumerable
stems that barred her passage, she heard a loud cry, but it was not
Canondah's voice. A noise like that of a heavy body falling into the
water, immediately followed, accompanied by a short but violent
splashing and beating in the mud, and then all was again still.
Breathless and terrified, Rosa forced her way through the reeds, and at
length reached the river bank, where she descried her companion standing
among the cypresses and mangroves, which grew down into the water.

"Canondah!" she exclaimed, in a tone of bitter reproach, as her friend
pointed to an enormous alligator that lay beating the mud with its tail
in the agonies of death. "Why do you do these things? Must Rosa lose her
sister, because she foolishly wishes to be a man, and to fight the
water-snake?"

"See there!" replied Canondah, pointing to a deep wound in the neck of
the alligator, and triumphantly waving her bloody knife; "I plunged it
to the hilt in his throat. The daughter of the Miko of the Oconees knows
how to strike the water-snake. But," added she, indifferently, "this one
was young, and already benumbed, for the water begins to be cold.
Canondah is only a weak girl, but she could teach the young white man to
strike the water-snake." As she spoke the last words, she glanced in the
direction of a cypress-tree which sprang out of the shallow water at a
few paces from the bank.

"The young white man?" said Rosa enquiringly.

The Indian girl laid her forefinger significantly upon her lips, washed
the blood from her hands and knife, and approached the tree. Separating
the impending branches with her left hand, she held out her right, open
and with the palm upwards, in sign of friendship, and then pointed to
the shore, towards which she herself slowly advanced. The boughs were
put aside, and a young man appeared, walking cautiously and with
difficulty towards the bank, clutching for support at the reeds that
grew around him. Rosa gazed in astonishment at the stranger.

"How came he here?" said she softly to her friend.

The Indian girl pointed in silence to a boat entangled amongst the
reeds, through which an attempt had evidently been made to force it. The
stranger had now arrived within a few paces of the shore, when he began
to stagger, and Canondah, who hurried to his assistance, was but just in
time to prevent his falling back into th