It has been shown how easily Hope Vines had been seized, even in the presence of her friends; for the two conspiracies against her—that of the Pilgrims to seize her person and arraign her for witchcraft, when death, in its most appalling shape, would undoubtedly have awaited her, and that of the Indians, who wished to exalt her as a wild-wood sibyl—produced so many and conflicting movements, that attention was divided, and the unhappy girl fell an easy victim to the snares of her captors.
Once securely in their hands, she was conveyed to one of their great magicians, who, by spells and enchantments, with which the tribes, from time immemorial, had been familiar, soon consigned her to a long, deep sleep.
Placed upon skins of the finest and purest texture, spread upon a wicker-frame which swung lightly between poles carried by sure-footed runners, Hope was borne away into the pathless wood, with no chance for rescue.
The Indians came and went among the colonists, but so well did they preserve their native immobility of feature, and reticence of tongue, that no suspicion was attached to them. With one exception, the old group of visitors was unchanged. Samoset, the crafty and experienced chief, eluded all questions, and even joined in the search; but his daughter, Acashee, no more frequented her old haunts; she dared not encounter the fiery glances of John Bonyton, who, she well knew, would couple the disappearance of Hope with her own hatred and revenge.
Slowly, fearfully passed the days; there were no tidings of Hope Vines. Days grew into months, and these into years, and yet she came not, and the beautiful, white-haired child, whose looks had been forever associated with the fate of Walter Raleigh, in the minds not only of his kinsmen, but of the colonists at large, grew to be a tale of the olden time.
Threads of her long, soft, silvery hair were looked upon as sacred relics. The fearful charge of witchcraft, which the elders would have preferred against her, awakened only recollections of reprehension, and people recalled nothing but her rare loveliness and her bright, poetic fancies, which rendered her
“A thing of beauty, and a joy forever.”
There were those who remembered those wonderful eyes of hers, so deep, so bright, and yet so foreboding, oftener fixed upon the skies than upon the earth, and these believed her white locks might be seen mingling with the mist of the Pool, and that her sweet body mingled with its perpetual ebb and flow.
Others, remembering her weird, supernatural beauty, and the attempts made by the Terrentines to obtain possession of her person, believed she still lived among them, secreted in some solitary cave, or mountain gorge, where her oracles inspired their chiefs to great deeds, and helped the women to courage and magnanimity. Little Hope was fast fading into the dim obscurity of fable and romance.