Fagged as I was, 'twas a long time before sleep came to make me forget;
a weary interval fraught with dismal mental miseries to march step and
step with the treadmill rackings of the aching muscles. What grievous
hap had befallen my dear lady? and how much or how little was I to blame
for this kidnapping of her by my relentless enemy? Was it a sharp
foreboding of some such resort to savage violence that had tortured her
into sending the appeal for help?

With this, I fell to dwelling afresh upon the wording of her message,
hungering avidly for some hint to give me leave to claim it for my own.
Though I made sure she did not love me,--had never loved me as other
than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond
the pale of sentiment,--yet I had hoped this friendship-love would give
her leave to call upon me in her hour of need.

Was I the one to whom her message had been sped? Suddenly I remembered
what Richard had said; that the arrow was the Catawba's. If Uncanoola
were the bearer of the parchment, he would surely know to whom he had
been sent.

His burrow in the leaf bed chanced to be next to mine, and I could hear
his steady breathing, light and long-drawn, like that of some wild
creature--as, truly, he was--sleeping with all the senses alert to
spring awake at a touch or the snapping of a twig. A word would arouse
him, and a single question might resolve the doubt.

I thought of all this, and yet, when I would have wakened the Indian, a
shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. For while the
doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me,