The eyes of the lovely Blanche rested on the form of Esock Mayall, when his first glance met hers, which was often and still oftener as the rose bloomed brighter on her cheek, her breath grew quicker, her smile more radiant, and the first blue flower of love bloomed into fondness for the young hunter, as he gazed upon her rounded waist, her snowy neck, ornamented with a shower of curls that fell loosely upon her shoulders.
CHAPTER VIII.
The landscape around the chief's wigwam was sublime. First his little field of corn clustering with golden ears; beyond, the beautiful tall forest trees formed arches overhead and locked their boughs in social harmony. A winding path led from the wigwam to the grove, bordered with wild roses, which must have appeared beautiful and gay in summer, but now began to droop and fade like the leaves of the surrounding forest. Esock Mayall wandered along this path of faded flowers to the edge of the dark overgrown forest, and stood for a time viewing the large, massive branches that had been torn from their parent trees by the fury of the wind and rain the previous day. The splinters of every form lay scattered where the currents of electricity in their fearful descent had rent in fragments some giant of the forest, torn out its oaken heart and scattered its ribs and limbs upon the forest floor.
After viewing the wonders of Nature, Esock Mayall was returning to the wigwam along the path of flowers, when that wood-nymph, the chief's daughter, appeared before him, gentle as the ring-dove.
And the glory of youth clung around her,
I felt her ambrosial breath on my cheek
Like the scent and perfume of wild roses.
She seemed to appear in all the beauty of innocence. Esock Mayall asked her who planted those roses.
"I planted them," said the maiden, "to perfume my path and wanton in the summer air around me whilst I walked to yonder grove in summer days, for twelve long years, to hear the evening and morning song of birds which charmed me to the grove; and then again I love the solitary woods, the sylvan shade. I learned, when but a child, to wander in yon shady grove to hear the squirrels chirp and bark."
Esock Mayall wished her to inform him how and when she first came to live in this overgrown forest. She said, "I could not tell, but when I was a child I lived in a cottage on a lake shore, where one could sit in its vine-clad porch and look out upon the windings of its beautiful shore and hear the fury of the waves amid the fearful storm. The Indians came one sunny day, when I was sitting under the arbor over the door, and killed my mother, robbed the house, and bore me away in their arms. The next morning one of the Indians took me on his back, and in three or four days they reached this place, and I was adopted into the chief's family. My mother used me kindly whilst she lived. After ten years she sickened and died. Since that time I have lived with the chief, my father. I have planted these flowers in rows to imitate the shores of the lake where I was born. That long half-moon curve you see was a wide, open bay, and that short turn yonder was a bluff of rocks."
Esock Mayall listened with admiration to her story, and then replied, "Would you go with me and walk the shores of that lake once more?"