Think of whom I might, or of what scenes, always this slim phantom drifted in between the sequences of thought, and vaguely I seemed to see her yellow hair, and that glimmer which sometimes came into her eyes, and which was the lovely dawning of her smile.
War seemed very far away, death but a fireside story half forgotten. For my thoughts were growing faintly fragrant with the scent of apple blossoms—white and pink bloom—sweet as her breath when she had whispered to me.
A strange young thing to haunt me with her fragrance—this girl Penelope—her smooth hands and snowy skin—and her little naked feet, like whitest silver there in the dew at Bowman's——
Suddenly, thought froze; from the foliage across the creek, scarce twenty feet from where I sat, and without the slightest sound, stepped an Indian in his paint.
Like a shot squirrel I dropped behind my bowlder and lay flat among the shore ferns, my heart so wild that my levelled rifle shook with the shock of palsy.
The roar of the waters was loud in my ears, but his calm voice came through it distinctly:
"Peace, brother!" he said in the soft, Oneida dialect, and lifted his right hand high in the sunshine, the open palm turned toward me.
"Don't move!" I called across the stream. "Lay your blanket on the ground and place your gun across it!"
Calmly he obeyed, then straightened up and stood there empty handed, naked in his paint, except for the beaded breadth of deer-skin that fell from belt to knee.
"Nick!" I called cautiously.