But, in the time of our story, the region stood in its untamed majesty; the whirling mass of waters thundering to the level below in the midst of an unbroken and boundless forest; and the great roar of the cataract booming through the solitude like the unceasing voice of the eternal deep.
Stealthily the Indian scout followed the woman to the base of the cataract. He saw her stoop her head to the overhanging waters, and she was gone. In vain he searched. The waters, at the point of her disappearance, threw themselves forward in a semicircular curve, whence arose masses of vapor, upon which the moonbeams playing created a silvery bow, more lovely even than the gorgeously-hued rainbow of the sun.
He rubbed his eyes, he threw himself prostrate upon the ground to detect any shelf of the overhanging rocks behind which she might have hidden herself. An owl started from a hollow tree overhead, and with silent wing floated into the deep forest. An old withered crone tottered down the bank, and, seating herself below where he lay, began to gather vervain and hellebore, for the moon was at its wane, and she was preparing some witch-broth to be used in incantation.
Slowly peering about, she turned over the damp stones, and caught slugs, and snails also, and then a toad was dragged forth, and she disappeared.
In vain the scout examined every nook and every spot in search of the vanished form. Not a trace remained. He looked above and below the fall; all was silent—no vestige of a human being, except in a canoe drawn up under the bank amid a clump of bushes. He stooped down to launch it, in order to cross the river, when his arms were strongly grasped by an Indian, whose garments were dripping with water.
He was old and white-headed, but a perfect Hercules in frame, and handled the young scout as if he had been a mere child in his hands. The contest was quick and decisive, for the old man raised the youth in his arms and dashed him upon the ground, where he lay stunned and bleeding, but with sufficient consciousness left to know his antagonist had launched the canoe, and was paddling across the river. Rousing himself, terrified and sorely perplexed, he turned his face westward, and sought once more the people of his tribe, ill at ease, feeling that the full object of his mission had not been accomplished. But, as the first duty of a soldier is to obey, so the first duty of a savage is to tell unflinchingly the truth, and he returned to tell all just as it had transpired.
CHAPTER XVII.
A REMINISCENCE.
We need not follow our nimble scout on his homeward way, a journey performed with far greater celerity than when he followed the footsteps of Acashee. Green meadows and mountain hights were left behind him, and with foot swift as that of the wild stag, and knowing as little of fatigue, he in due time reached the Casco Bay. Here he found a canoe secreted or deserted, which he took without scruple and launched fearlessly across the water, the long strokes of the paddle showing him fresh as the day on which he started upon his adventures.