"And who stays above, if I may be allowed to ask?" inquired Hezekiah, with an anxious expression of countenance.
"I do myself; have no apprehension upon that score."
His alarm thus quieted, Hezekiah hesitated no longer.
In the cabin he found a plain, substantial meal prepared, to which he, Pat, Mr. Lander, and our heroine seated themselves. The elderly personage besought the blessing of God upon the food spread before them, and spoke not a another word during the meal.
Great as was Hezekiah's hunger, his curiosity was equally great, and, accordingly, as he masticated the food, he kept his eyes rolling continually about him in search of knowledge. He noticed that the cabin was divided into two compartments, one of which he naturally concluded was devoted to the exclusive use of the young lady who presided at the table. Several times he was on the point of asking permission to take a look into this. But his sense of propriety prevented him, and he devoured his victuals in silence.
As for Pat, he was hungry—that was sufficient. Excepting the food itself, nothing presented the least attraction to him, and he devoured this with a gusto that put to shame the achievements of the others.
The meal finished, the two returned to the deck, and took the place of Waring, while he partook of his dinner. As our two friends looked out upon the still, solemn forest, and the placid, unruffled river, down which they were so noiselessly gliding, they could hardly realize that the profound silence that then held reign was as treacherous as the calm which precedes the marshaling of the storm king's forces upon the ocean. And yet they well knew that within the depths of this wilderness lurked the Indian, whose life was devoted to the one object of exterminating the white race: that he was as cunning and crafty as years of war and bloodshed could make him, and that no means would be left untried to encompass the death of themselves and those with them.
"Hezekiah," said Pat, upon whom this impressive scene had not been entirely lost, "have you ever been in these parts before?"
"Never in all my born days, and I wish to Heaven I wasn't here now."
"What's the trouble now? Begorrah, ye isn't scart, be yees?"