Our friend made a full statement of his wife’s abduction, years before, and of the assertion of the dying man that she had been taken from him by members of this tribe, who had retained her ever since.  The chief waited sometime before replying; he seemed debating with himself as to the proper course to pursue.  Finally he said he must consult with one of his warriors, and departed abruptly from the lodge.

Ten minutes later, while the missionary, with a painfully-throbbing heart, was gazing around the lodge, with that minute scrutiny of the most trifling objects peculiar to us at such times, he caught the sound of returning footsteps, and turned to the lodge door.  There stood the Indian, and, directly beside him, his own lost Cora!

The next day at noon, a camp-fire might have been seen some miles south of the northern village of which we have made mention.  An Indian was engaged in cooking a piece of meat, while the missionary and his reclaimed jewel, sitting side by side, her head reclining upon his shoulder and his hand dallying with her hair, were holding delightful communion.  She looked pale and somewhat emaciated, for these years of absence had indeed been fraught with suffering; but the old sweet look had never departed.  It was now changed into an expression of perfect joy.

The wife’s great anxiety was to reach home and see the child she had left an infant, but who was now a frolicksome boy, and she could hardly consent to pause even when night overtook them, and her lagging limbs told her husband how exhausted she had become.  Cora never had suspected the identity of the Indian and the hunter, until on that sad day when he sprung from behind the cabin and hurried her off into the wood.  There was something, however, in his look, when he first felt the weight of her husband’s blow, that never left her remembrance.  While hurrying her swiftly through the wood he said nothing at all, and at night, while she pretended to sleep, he watched by the camp-fire.  It was the light of this fire which had puzzled Teddy so much.  On the succeeding day the abductor reached the river and embarked in his canoe.  A half-hour later he leaned over the canoe and washed the paint from his face and made himself known in his true character, as Brazey Davis, her former lover.  He had scarcely done so, when an Indian canoe rounded a bend in the river, and, despite his earnest protestations, the savages took the captive from him, and carried her with them to their village, where she had been ever since.  Retained very closely, as all prisoners among Indians are, she had heard nothing of Teddy’s visit.  She was treated with kindness, as the destined wife of a young chief; but the suit for her consent never was pressed by the chief, as it is in an Indian’s code of honor never to force a woman to a distasteful marriage.  The young brave, with true Indian pertinacity, could wait his time, confident that his kindness and her long absence from home would secure her consent to the savage alliance.  She was denied nothing but her liberty, and her prayers to be returned to her husband and child.