Sir Richard Vines looked upon him with almost paternal pride, and then his eye would rest mournfully upon little Hope, whose future was so shadowy, dim, and unearthly in its promise.
The day before the ship was to take her departure for England, Sir Richard had determined to give a festival in honor of John Bonyton, to which he had been invited, and all of every rank and condition made welcome.
Accordingly the house was thrown open to all comers. Indians were there from the far north and east, who looked upon John Bonyton as the ideal of a young brave, and came to bid him a sorrowful farewell.
The rustic games of old England were revived upon the lawn. There were feats of wrestling and of the race, leaping and lifting—in all of which John Bonyton showed himself expert beyond his fellows. Even the older, austere exiles from fatherland looked on at first in tolerance and finally in sympathy, as thoughts of their own youth and prowess returned, and more than one of the elders joined in the amusements of the day.
At length there approached from the woods a group of Indians, bravely equipped in belt and feathery robe, and led on by music peculiar to themselves, but not unlike that of the castinet. The group divided right and left, and a phantom of beauty bounded forward into the center of the lawn.
She was habited in a soft, white dress composed of wool, reaching little below the knee. It was ample in fold and gathered loosely at the waist by a girdle of wampum. The edge of the robe was ornamented with a fringe of purple shells, which tinkled at the slightest movement, and the round, uncovered arms, and the ankles cased in silken hose, were decorated with circlets of the same shells. The top of the moccasin was fringed like the robe. Masses of hair were folded in braids around the small, faultlessly-shaped head, surmounted by a tuft of feathers from the wing of the black eagle.
The fair vision raised her arms in concord with the music, and lifted her resplendent eyes upward as she moved from side to side, now in slow, measured curves, and now in rapid steps across the arena, and anon bending in those genuflexions which indicate the religious dance.
A brief space, and another form, taller and of darker hue, habited in a similar style of dress, but of a rich, crimson color and fringed with shells of a pearly whiteness, and her long, black braids intermingled with white shells, joined the graceful dancer. Then a tall figure, crowned with feathers of the war-eagle, and armed with bow and arrow, a perfect impersonation of the golden-bright Apollo, bounding and leaping, and shouting a low melody, entered.
Poised lightly upon one foot, with eyes intently fixed upward, he drew an arrow to the head, and then, sinking upon one knee, watched the flight of the feathered messenger.
With upraised arms, and eyes lifted to the blue sky, the dancers disappeared, and it needed no one to say that the two girls were Hope Vines and Acashee, and the young Apollo of grace and beauty was John Bonyton. The dance was that of the Hunter’s Moon.