Edith had ridden forward, and they had lost sight of her, when she came galloping back, pale as death, and hardly able to retain her seat from terror.
"Edith, my child," said her father, "what has happened?"
She could only point with her finger to a thin column of blue smoke that curled above the trees. Mr. Grafton knew that it indicated the presence of Indians, at this time the terror of all the inhabitants.
"No doubt they are friendly, my dear child," said Mr. Grafton; and he sent Paul, who was armed, forward to reconnoitre.
Paul soon returned, showing his white teeth from ear to ear.
"The piccaninnies," he said.
Mr. Grafton and Edith rode forward, and in a little hollow at the foot of a rock, from which bubbled a clear spring, a young Indian woman, with a pappoose at her feet, was half reclining; another child, attached in its birch cradle to the pendent branch of an elm tree, was gently rocked by the wind. A fire was built against the rock, and venison suspended before it to roast.
It was a beautiful little domestic scene, and Mr. Grafton and Edith stopped to contemplate it. They soon learned that the husband of the Indian was in the forest; but he was friendly, and, after exchanging smiles, Edith dismounted.
She sat on the grass, caressing the young pappoose, and talked with the mother in that untaught, mute language that young and kind hearts so easily understand.
This little adventure delayed them so long that it was past noon when they reached the secluded farmhouse we have described in the first chapter of our little tale.