As soon as it was dark, Mabel’s heart began to beat with increased violence; and she adopted and changed her plan of proceeding at least a dozen times in a single hour.  June was always the source of her greatest embarrassment; for she did not well see, first, how she was to ascertain when Chingachgook was at the door, where she doubted not he would soon appear; and, secondly, how she was to admit him, without giving the alarm to her watchful companion.  Time pressed, however; for the Mohican might come and go away again, unless she was ready to receive him.  It would be too hazardous to the Delaware to remain long on the island; and it became absolutely necessary to determine on some course, even at the risk of choosing one that was indiscreet.  After running over various projects in her mind, therefore, Mabel came to her companion, and said, with as much calmness as she could assume, —­

“Are you not afraid, June, now your people believe Pathfinder is in the blockhouse, that they will come and try to set it on fire?”

“No t’ink such t’ing.  No burn blockhouse.  Blockhouse good; got no scalp.”

“June, we cannot know.  They hid because they believed what I told them of Pathfinder’s being with us.”

“Believe fear.  Fear come quick, go quick.  Fear make run away; wit make come back.  Fear make warrior fool, as well as young girl.”

Here June laughed, as her sex is apt to laugh when anything particularly ludicrous crosses their youthful fancies.

“I feel uneasy, June; and wish you yourself would go up again to the roof and look out upon the island, to make certain that nothing is plotting against us; you know the signs of what your people intend to do better than I.”

“June go, Lily wish; but very well know that Indian sleep; wait for ’e fader.  Warrior eat, drink, sleep, all time, when don’t fight and go on war-trail.  Den never sleep, eat, drink —­ never feel.  Warrior sleep now.”

“God send it may be so! but go up, dear June, and look well about you.  Danger may come when we least expect it.”

June arose, and prepared to ascend to the roof; but she paused, with her foot on the first round of the ladder.  Mabel’s heart beat so violently that she was fearful its throbs would be heard; and she fancied that some gleamings of her real intentions had crossed the mind of her friend.  She was right in part, the Indian woman having actually stopped to consider whether there was any indiscretion in what she was about to do.  At first the suspicion that Mabel intended to escape flashed across her mind; then she rejected it, on the ground that the pale-face had no means of getting off the island, and that the blockhouse was much the most secure place she could find.  The next thought was, that Mabel had detected some sign of the near approach of her father.  This idea, too, lasted but an instant; for June entertained some such opinion of her companion’s ability to understand symptoms of this sort —­ symptoms that had escaped her own sagacity —­ as a woman of high fashion entertains of the accomplishments of her maid.  Nothing else in the same way offering, she began slowly to mount the ladder.