Jasper, which glided away from that of the Pathfinder so noiselessly,
that it had been swallowed up in the gloom before Mabel allowed
herself to believe the young man would really venture alone on
a service which struck her imagination as singularly dangerous.
During this time, the party continued to float with the current,
no one speaking, and, it might almost be said, no one breathing,
so strong was the general desire to catch the minutest sound that
should come from the shore. But the same solemn, we might, indeed,
say sublime, quiet reigned as before; the washing of the water,
as it piled up against some slight obstruction, and the sighing of
the trees, alone interrupting the slumbers of the forest. At the
end of the period mentioned, the snapping of dried branches was
again faintly heard, and the Pathfinder fancied that the sound of
smothered voices reached him.

"I may be mistaken," he said, "for the thoughts often fancy what
the heart wishes; but these were notes like the low tones of the
Delaware."

"Do the dead of the savages ever walk?" demanded Cap.

"Ay, and run too, in their happy hunting-grounds, but nowhere
else. A red-skin finishes with the 'arth, after the breath quits
the body. It is not one of his gifts to linger around his wigwam
when his hour has passed."

"I see some object on the water," whispered Mabel, whose eye had
not ceased to dwell on the body of gloom, with close intensity,
since the disappearance of Jasper.