An arrow was shot from the bow to gratify a request.  She followed the quivering thing with her eye, as it sped like a shaft of light to its destined mark.  To retrieve it she walked with the youth to where, fixed in a bale of cotton, it trembled, some hundred yards away.  Slowly she returned by the youth’s side, and drooped her head, listening to the wild mountain adventures he was telling—­the chase of the elk, the antelope, and the wild buffalo; the hazardous ride through the wild prairies, expanding away in the distance to kiss the horizon; the stealthy wiles of the revengeful savage; the fierce fight of savage men; the race for very life, when the foe followed; and the bivouac upon the prairie’s breast, with the weary horse sleeping and resting by his side.  Will he ever forget the speaking of the beaming features of that beautiful creature, when she lifted her head and looked into his face?  A frown darkened the matron’s features as her eleve returned to the curious group which was listening to the narrative of the older of the two strangers.  It said:  “What did you leave me for?  Why this indiscretion?” Ah! how often old women forget they were once young!

The steamer is coming.  She is here; and the trappings of the wanderers are on board.  The young wild man stands alone upon the upper deck.  His eyes pierce to where stands the sylph he leaves with reluctance.  She is looking at him.  He lifts his cap and bows farewell.  She waves her kerchief in return.  The steamer speeds away.  They are parted.  Has that brief interview left an impression upon those two young hearts to endure beyond a day?  Will she dream of the dark beard, curled and flowing—­of the darker eye which looked and spoke? and will the wild story of the western wilderness come in the silent darkness of her chamber, and make her nestle closer to her pillow?  Will her heart ask:  “Shall I ever meet him again?”

He has gone away; a waif about the land—­a feather on the world, driven about, as destiny impels, without fixed intentions; yet buoyant with the ardor of youth, and happy in the excess of youthful hopes, dreamy and wild adventures.  He has tasted the savage love of woods and wilds, and the nature—­which was born thousands of years ere the teachings of civilization had tamed the wild man into an educated, home-loving being—­revives, and the two struggle for mastery in his heart.  The bleak mountain-peaks, the wide-extended plain and its wild denizens, and the excitement these give, stirs his bosom, and the wish struggles up to return to them.  But the gentler chords of his heart are in tune.  The once-loved home, and she, the once-loved and yet-remembered maiden, is there, and it may be she pines for his return.  He gazed on the beautiful apparition but a moment gone, and thought of another; and thought begat thought until the loved one he had left rose up to memory’s call.  He was alone, looking upon the great river through whose turbid waters he