hands, they are
small and delicate as those of a girl, though the seawater has stained
them brown."

"He may be a messenger," suggested Rosa doubtfully.

The Indian maiden again shook her head. "See," said she, "he comes from
the great salt lake which drinks the waters of our river, and yet he
knows not how to bring his boat through the thick grass. He took the
water-snake for a rotten tree, and stepped upon it, and it buried its
teeth in his flesh. Thy white brother has fled from the chief of the
Salt Lake."

She spoke these words with as much confidence and decision as if she had
herself accompanied the stranger on his adventurous voyage.

"And will Canondah," said Rosa, "leave her brother to perish of fever in
the cold night air--he who never harmed her or hers?"

"My sister speaks with the tongue of a white, but Canondah is the
daughter of the great Miko," replied the Indian girl, with some severity
of manner. The next moment her countenance again brightened, and she
took Rosa's hand.

"Canondah will listen to the words of her sister," said she, "and will
befriend her white brother. She will take him to the hollow tree."

The two maidens now raised the young man, and each taking one of his
arms, assisted him through the thick growth of reeds. It was a long and
wearisome task, for loss of blood, and previous privations, had rendered
the stranger nearly helpless, and they were hardly able, by the utmost
exertion of their strength, to keep him on his feet and convey him
along. At one moment, when half-way through the palmettos, he seemed
about to breathe his last; his strength left him, and it was only by the
most laborious and painful efforts that the young girls got him over the
rest of the field. Panting and trembling, they at last reached its
extremity, and Rosa sank upon the ground, incapable of further exertion.
By a last effort Canondah drew her burthen out of the palmettos, and
then threw herself down by the side of her friend.

The last rays of the sun still played upon the summits of the loftier
trees, of which the lower branches were dimly seen in the rapidly
thickening twilight, when Rosa approached the Indian maiden, and with
the words, "The sun is low," roused her from her state of exhaustion and
semi-unconsciousness. Canondah sprang to her feet, and the two girls
tripped side by side into the wood, until they at last paused before an
enormous cotton-tree. Several gigantic vines, in whose powerfu