of pity, admiration, and horror, as her dark eye followed the easy
motions of the savage. The tresses of this lady were shining and black,
like the plumage of the raven. Her complexion was not brown, but it
rather appeared charged with the color of the rich blood, that seemed
ready to burst its bounds. And yet there was neither coarseness nor
want of shadowing in a countenance that was exquisitely regular, and
dignified and surpassingly beautiful. She smiled, as if in pity at her
own momentary forgetfulness, discovering by the act a row of teeth that
would have shamed the purest ivory; when, replacing the veil, she bowed
her face, and rode in silence, like one whose thoughts were abstracted
from the scene around her.




CHAPTER 2

"Sola, sola, wo ha, ho, sola!"
--Shakespeare

While one of the lovely beings we have so cursorily presented to the
reader was thus lost in thought, the other quickly recovered from the
alarm which induced the exclamation, and, laughing at her own weakness,
she inquired of the youth who rode by her side:

"Are such specters frequent in the woods, Heyward, or is this sight an
especial entertainment ordered on our behalf? If the latter, gratitude
must close our mouths; but if the former, both Cora and I shall have
need to draw largely on that stock of hereditary courage which we boast,
even before we are made to encounter the redoubtable Montcalm."