"May I know your name?" asked our hero.
"I am Sunbeam, daughter of the Seminole chief."
"And mine is Henry Lee," he replied to her inquiring look. "You are well named," he continued. "I have seen many daughters of the pale-faces; but none so fair and bright as you. Sunbeam, at this my first glance, I love you; can you sometime love me?"
"I do love you now," replied the artless girl; "the Great Spirit tells me to do so; but we must not be seen together; they will kill us, we must part at once."
"Dearest," cried Henry, "when can we meet again?"
"To-morrow at noon," came the impulsive reply. "In my cave there back of that cypress; no one is allowed to enter but me; there I say my prayers, and my father says it is sacred to me alone. Good-bye, Henry," and she sped like a deer into the shades of the forest.
The youth was sincere, for it had flashed upon him like an inspiration when their eyes first met, that she was born for him, and he for her. They were married in heaven, ages ago. It came like a word from the Infinite to these kindred souls. A sudden rent in the veil of darkness which surrounds us manifests things unseen. Such visions sometimes effect a transformation in those whom they visit, converting a poor camel driver into a Mohammed, a peasant girl tending goats, into a Joan of Arc.
This love-flash from the invisible blent these two hitherto widely separated souls into one, even as the positive electricity leaps through the spaces to find the negative, and when met, dissolves the separateness into a harmonious oneness which can never be sundered. The unsophisticated Indian maiden went her way, thrilling with the thought that her heart is in his bosom, and his in hers, useless one without the other.
The white youth was suddenly changed from an idle, wandering, purposeless dreamer, into a fearless lover, ready to face death itself to secure the object of his worship, and he sauntered back to his hut with no flinching from the many dangers which surrounded him.
There a black slave met him, bearing an abundant feast. "Eat," said the negro, "and then go to the lodge of Tiger-tail, the largest in the village, with the skin of a tiger stretched on the door."