and clustered bushes must inevitably sever some of the twigs and buds Their progress was slow, but unerring.  The course they pursued was the direction taken by Mary and her rescuer.  It was not long before they arrived within a few feet of the place of the maiden’s concealment.  But now they were at fault.  There were no bushes immediately around the fallen tree.  They paused, the chief in the van, with their bows and arrows and tomahawks in readiness for instant use.  They knew that the maiden could not return to her friends on foot, or the treacherous savage be able to bear her far on his shoulder.  They thought that one or both must be concealed somewhere in the neighborhood, and the fallen tree, were it hollow, was the place most likely to be selected for that purpose.  After scanning the fallen trunk a few minutes in silence, and discovering nothing to realize their hopes, they uttered a terrific yell, and commenced striking their tomahawks in the wood, and ripping up the bark in quest of some hiding-place.  But their search was in vain.  The fallen trunk was sound and solid throughout, and the young chief sat down on it within three paces of Mary!  Others, in passing about, frequently trod on the very verge of the concealed pit.

Mary was awakened by the yell, but knew not that the sound came from her enemies.  The Indian had told her that he would soon return, and her heart now fluttered with the hope that her father and her friends were at hand.  Yet she prudently determined not to rush from her concealment until she was better assured of the fact.  She did not think that the savages would ever suspect that she was hid under the snow, but yet she thought it very strange that her father did not come to her at once.  Several minutes had elapsed since she had been startled by the sounds in the immediate vicinity.  She heard the tramp of men almost directly over her head, and the strokes against the fallen trunk.  She was several times on the eve of rising up, but was as often withheld by some mysterious impulse.  She endeavored to reflect calmly, but still she could not, by any mode of conjecture, realize the probability of her foes having returned and traced her thither.  Yet an undefinable fear still possessed her, and she endeavored with patience to await the pleasure of her friends.  But when the chief seated himself in her vicinity, and fell into one of his fits of abstraction, and the whole party became comparatively still and hushed, the poor girl’s suspense was almost insufferable.  She knew that human beings were all around her, and yet her situation was truly pitiable and lonely.  She felt assured that if the war-party had returned in pursuit of her, the means which enabled them to trace their victim to the fallen trunk would likewise have sufficed to indicate her hiding place.  Then why should they hesitate?  The yells that awakened her were not heard distinctly, and under the circumstances she could not believe that she was surrounded by savages.