Story 1--Chapter II.
Two Travellers.
The silence succeeding is so profound that the slightest sound may be heard to a considerable distance. Though not professional hunters, these young Nimrods of the backwoods are accustomed to keep open ears. It is a rustling among the reeds that now hinders them from resuming conversation—the canes that hang over the trace of travel. There are footsteps upon it, coming from the direction of Helena. They are soft as the fall of moccasined or female foot. For all this, they are heard distinctly in the glade—hunters, horses, and hounds having pricked up their ears to listen.
Who comes from Helena?
The question has scarce shaped itself when the answer also assumes shape. There are two upon the trace—the foremost, a youth of about eighteen, the other, a girl, at least two years younger.
They are not like enough to be brother and sister. They may be of the same mother, but not father. If their father be the same, they must have come from two mothers.
Both are of interesting personal appearance, strikingly so. The youth is tall, tersely and elegantly formed, with features cast in a mould that reminds one of the Romagna; the same facial outline, the prominent nose and chin, the eagle eye, that in childhood has glanced across the Teverino, or the Tiber, and a complexion equally suggestive of Italian origin, a tinge of olive in the skin, slightly damasked upon the cheeks, with, above all, a thick chevelure, black as the plumage of a buzzard. While different in mien, this youth is dressed altogether unlike any of the young hunters who regard him from the glade. He is in true hunter costume, slightly partaking of the garb more especially affected by the Indian. His feet are in mocassins, his limbs encased in leggings of green-baize cloth, a calico hunting shirt covers his shoulders; while, instead of cap or hat, he wears the “toque,” or turban, long since adopted by the semi-civilised tribes of the frontier. He is equipped with powder-horn and bullet-pouch, slung crossways under his arm, armed with a long pea-rifle resting negligently over his left shoulder.
His companion has been spoken off as a girl. The designation stands good; but to describe her will require less minuteness of detail. Sixteen in countenance; older to judge by the budding promise of her beauty; clad in a gown of common homespun, copperas-dyed, ill stitched, and loosely adjusted; a skin soft as velvet, and ruddy as rude health can make it; hair to all appearance unacquainted with combs; yet spreading as the sun through a southern window; eyes like stars clipped from the blue canopy of the sky. Such was she who followed, or rather accompanied, the youth in the calico hunting shirt.
A sudden fire flashes into the eyes of Alf Brandon. It is the expression of a spirit not friendly to one of the new comers, which may be easily guessed, for the girl is too young and too fair to have excited hostility in the breast of any one. It is her companion against whom the son of the planter feels some secret resentment.