Holden paid not the least regard to the information. According to his
system of fatalism he would have considered it beyond his power to
alter the predetermined course of things, but it is not probable that
his mind dwelt upon the thought of personal security. He went straight
forward to the village, calling at places where he thought he would
most likely find customers for his wares, and in no respect avoiding
public observation. He had sold his baskets, and was on his return to
the river, over whose frozen surface lay his road home, when he beheld
a scene that solicited his attention and arrested his steps.

It was an Indian burial. Holden in his round had strolled as far
as the piece of table land, of which mention was made in the first
chapter, to a distance of nearly a mile from the head of the Severn,
and was at the moment opposite a spot reserved by the tribe, of which
a small number were lingering in the neighborhood, as the revered
resting-place of the bones of their ancestors, whence they themselves
hoped to start for the happy hunting grounds. It was a place of
singular beauty, selected apparently with a delicate appreciation of
the loveliness of the scenery, for nowhere else in the vicinity was
there so attractive a combination of hill and dale, and wood and
water, to compose a landscape.

The little burying-ground, shorn of its original dimensions by
the encroachments of the fatal race that came from the rising sun,
contained less than half an acre, and was situated at the top of a
ravine, running down from the level land, on which the gravestones
were erected, to the Yaupáae, where that river expands itself into
a lake. The sides of the ravine, along its whole sweep upwards, was
covered quite to the top with immense oaks and chestnuts, the growth