'Nonsense! not you!'
They seemed to have other secrets to tell by and by, which required the open air. The eleven months last gone past had brought many changes to both. And there they walked to and fro on the margin of the forest, until the moon's silver wheel rolled up over the dusk trees, and lit Cedar Creek gloriously.
'What pure and transparent air!' exclaimed Linda, coming back to the present from the past. 'Is your moonlight always laden with that sweet aromatic odour?'
'Don't you recognise balm of Gilead? Your greenhouse and garden plant is a weed here. Our pines also help in the fragrance you perceive.'
'Robert, I know that the red patches burning steadily yonder are the stumps you showed me; but the half circular rings of fire, I don't understand them.'
'The niggers round the trunks of some trees,' explained Robert. 'That's a means we use for burning through timber, and so saving axe-work. Do you notice the moving light in the distance, on the lake? It comes from a pine-torch fixed in the bow of a canoe, by which an Indian is spearing fish.'
'Oh, have you Indians here? how delightful! I have always so longed to see a real live red man. Are they at all like Uncas and Chingachgook? I shall pay them a visit first thing in the morning.'
'You'll be visited yourself, I imagine;' and Robert laughed. 'You don't know the sensation your arrival has caused.'