THE TALKING LEAVES.[1]
An Indian Story.
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
Chapter VII.
efore Steve Harrison and his friend left the ruins of the ancient town behind them, they had decided that they were going away from a complete solitude—a place where even wild Indians did not very often come.
It looked desolate enough, with its scattered inclosures of rough stone, not one of them with any roof on, or any sign that people had lived there for a hundred years at least. The windows in the tumbling walls had probably never had either sash or glass in them, and the furniture, used by the people who built the village, whatever it may have been, had long since disappeared.
It could never have been a very large or populous town, but it could hardly at any time have had a wilder-looking set of inhabitants than were the party of men who drew near it at about the time when Steve and Murray were killing their cougar.