"But what?" cried Mr. Wright. "My God! you don't mean to say that—that Nat Wolfe is lost!"
"Look out for that girl," called Joe, to Mrs. Wright, who turned and found Elizabeth fallen upon her face.
"I s'pose I've killed her, after all," muttered the guide, "it's my luck with that gal. Yes, Wright, Wolfe's gone, no mistake. I don't believe she's comin' to, right away; I guess I'll go for the Doctor."
"Yes, do—her father'll know just what to do. She's in a dead faint. It come on her so sudden."
"I hain't got sense to break any thing softly," muttered the old fellow, starting off in the direction of a cluster of tents, in one of which he had seen Dr. Carollyn as he passed by it. When he returned with that gentleman, the maiden was still unconscious; and it required time and skill to revive her from the deathly stupor into which she had been stricken.
Dr. Carollyn was shocked when he learned the cause of his daughter's illness; he had admired the hunter's brave and chivalric character, and felt grateful to him for the priceless service he had rendered in the rescue of his child—while he could not make up his mind to receive him as a son and a rival in the affections of that child. His awful and tragic fate affected him deeply; while he was pained to see the evidence of Elizabeth's interest in the lost one.
He hoped that a great part of the effect of the news upon her was owing to the weakened, excited state of her nerves, her mind and body having been overwrought by the occurrences of the past few weeks. That it was more a shock to her nerves than a fatal blow to her heart, he allowed himself to believe. He himself felt appalled by the sudden and terrible nature of the catastrophe.
With the utmost gentleness and tenderness he won her back to consciousness, and soothed and strengthened her through the two or three days' prostration which followed. During these days he made up his mind to wait no longer, before urging the necessary step of a parting from her old friends, than until she should be strong enough to undertake the return journey.
It was now a week since the news of the accident. Elizabeth was about her little duties, pale and quiet; and her father was making all needful preparations for a speedy departure. Having learned of a train that was about to start eastward, he had taken this time to give her warning of his intentions. Had such a dazzling change in her prospects occurred a month ago, she would have welcomed it with all the delight and eagerness of her age. When oppressed with the dreariness of that long journey, tired of the homely fare, the rough company, if she had been told that such a father as this—a man to whom she could cling with all the fondness of her wild young heart—would come to her and offer all those splendors after which she had vaguely pined, her fancy would have reveled in happy enchantments—her dull life would have opened into a magic land, out of that monotonous desert.
Now her eyes fixed themselves upon the blackened forest with a gaze that could not be torn away; they seemed to say in that expression of mute longing and despair, that it would be sweeter to her to go there and throw herself, like the Hindoo widow, on that smoldering pyre, than to take her father's hand and go with him where every thing that makes life beautiful to the young awaited her. Such a depth of feeling in the breast of one who had been but a child a little while ago, proved that the character written in those mobile features and singularly expressive eyes was one of no ordinary power. She was one that, loving once, like her mother, would love so purely and deeply that to jar or rudely to doubt or destroy, would be death; and with this fondness was blended much of the passionate tenacity of her father's nature.