Henrich caught his sister’s hand, and kissing her playfully, attempted to draw her from the bower.  But she looked sad and anxious, and replied—­

’O, Henrich! do not ask me; my bower is fair enough, and I would not go as far as that old tree tonight, for all the flowers that grow in the forest.  Stay with me, Henrich, dear.  Our mother will join us soon, and she will be alarmed if you are not here.’

The boy looked at his sister’s pensive face with an affectionate smile:  but he was not to be diverted from his scheme.

‘Stay here, then, Edith,’ he replied; ’and tell my mother that I shall return in little more than ten minutes.  Come, Ludovico,’ he added, calling his little brother, who was always ready to follow where Henrich led.  ’Come, Ludovico, you are not afraid of the shadows.  Bring your basket, and you shall gather moss while I dig up my creeper.  When Edith sees its drooping white flowers, she will forgive me for laughing at her unusual fears.’

Edith said no more.  She was sure that Henrich knew best; and she silently watched him leave the garden, and enter the shade of the thick forest, accompanied by her joyous little brother.  Were her fears, indeed, the mere creation of her own young fancy I or were they occasioned by one of those strange and unaccountable presentiments which have been felt so frequently as to justify the old proverb,

‘Coming events cast their shadow, before them.’

Edith sat on the mossy seat that Henrich had formed in her bower.  It looked towards the wood, and the commanding situation which it occupied, on a rising ground towards the center of the garden, enabled her to overlook the green fence that enclosed the grounds, and to watch the receding forms of her brothers, until they were hidden from her sight by the winding of the path through the underwood.  Still she gazed, and her heart grew sad; and tears, which she could not check, rolled down her cheeks.  Did she again fancy? and did her tearful eyes now convert the bushes into the figures of two dark Indians, in the costume of the dreaded Nausetts?  Surely those were human forms that moved so swiftly and so silently from the dark stem of a gigantic oak, and crossing the forest path, were instantly again concealed.  Edith wiped her glistening eyes.  She held her breath, and feared to move; but the beating of her young heart was audible.  No sound met her listening ear—­no movement again was detected by her straining eye—­and she began to think that her own fears had conjured up those terrible forms.

But what was that distant cry that sounded from the wood in the direction in which her brothers had gone?  And why does she now behold Ludovico running wildly, and alone, down the path, with terror depicted in his countenance?

Edith flew to meet him; but ere she reached him, the dreadful truth was made known to her by his agonized cry.

’O, my brother! my brother! they have taken him, Edith; they are dragging him away!  They will kill him!’ he shrieked aloud, as he threw himself into Edith’s arms, almost choked with the violence of his feelings, and the speed with which he had fled.