intensity of her joy, if it had not been allayed by those doubts, fears, and presentiments of evil which always, when the long-yearned-for hour of fruition approaches, whispers that perfect bliss is never given to man. How true she found these doubts to be! Her daily and nightly prayer, her ceaseless longings had been vouchsafed to her, she was at Long Arrow again; she saw Keefe once more, only a few feet divided her from him, she had only to call his name aloud and he would hear; yet all the pangs of absence, all the tortures of suspense, all the sickness of hope deferred would have been happiness compared with the agony of that moment. Then, suffer as she might, hope was still hers; now, she had nothing but despair. In her most desponding hour she had never contemplated such a grief as this. She had sometimes pictured Keefe cold and careless, she had thought of him absent from Long Arrow, she had even trembled with a strange fear of finding him ill; but of finding him happy in the love of another, bound to her for ever, she had never dreamed.
Pale, cold, still as marble she stood; her brain seemed petrified, her heart turned to ice; yet she heard their words, she saw their looks. The rain fell in torrents, and drenched her garments, the chill wind pierced through them; but she felt neither rain nor wind, her brain began to burn, and seemed to scorch her wet hand when she touched her forehead. Keefe and Helen seemed to her like two happy spirits, floating in an atmosphere of light and bliss, while she was thrust out to wander for ever in darkness, misery, and despair. A wild groan burst from her lips, and, terrified at the sound, she fled from the house with frantic speed. Unconscious where she was going, she turned into the path that led to Brady’s old shanty, and never paused in her flight till she reached it. Mechanically she laid her hand on the latch of the door: it yielded to her touch, and she entered. There was a fire burning on the hearth, though the rest of the shanty seemed empty, and Coral threw herself down beside it. She did so without purpose or reflection; she never thought of drying her garments, from which the water was streaming: she was conscious of but one thought, one feeling—Keefe loved another. She was nothing to him now; perhaps he had forgotten her very existence. Had she been capable of feeling anger against him it might have lessened her pain, but her love for him was of too holy, profound, and devotional a nature for this, she only felt that she was divided from him for ever, and that a darkness like that of the grave seemed to have entered her heart. But with the gloom of death did not come its painless calm; a vivid, torturing sense of anguish, such as the dwellers in the narrow house can never know, taught her that she was still a living, suffering child of Time. She saw before her, as if painted in light, the forms of Keefe and his beloved; she saw Helen, bright with beauty and happiness, leaning fondly over Keefe; she saw him looking up at her with proud affection; all the anguish of those unhappy souls doomed to enter the city of love, and see the gates of Paradise closed for ever behind them, rushed over her once more, and falling with her face to the ground, she cried aloud—
“Oh! Father in Heaven, take me away, let me die—there is peace in the grave—the dead sleep sweetly: there was a smile on my father’s face when he lay in his coffin. Oh! if I had died the first day I left Long Arrow I could never have known how much more I was doomed to bear.”
Then she ceased, and lay for a time without sound or motion. Suddenly the door opened, and some one entered. The fire had burned so low that it gave very little light, and the newcomer, walking up to it, threw on a knot of pitch pine, without noticing Coral; at the same instant a man, who had been lying on the floor wrapped in a buffalo skin, started up, and joining the stranger, they talked together eagerly, looking at Coral as they did so.
The fresh pine thrown on the fire filled the shanty with light, and, roused by the blaze and the sound of voices, Coral raised her head and looked at the speakers. One was a woman, who had been wrapped in an Indian blanket when she entered, but she had now thrown it off, disclosing a figure remarkably tall for a female, but beautifully moulded. She wore a jacket of blue cloth, trimmed with silver buttons, and a petticoat to match, and in her heavy black tresses silver beads were twisted. Her whole attire was coquettishly and becomingly arranged, and set off her remarkable beauty to the best advantage. Her face was a perfect oval in shape, her features regular, her brown skin beautifully clear, and her eyes intensely bright; but there was nothing of that modest timidity and submissiveness which gives so peculiar a charm to the faces of most Indian girls, nothing of that wild shyness in the eyes resembling the glance of some half-tamed creature of the woods; on the contrary, her beautiful face was bold, haughty, and imperious in expression, and the fire of her dazzling eyes untempered by a shadow of bashfulness or fear; her face, figure, mien, and gestures might have served for the model of some Amazonian princess.
The man had his back towards Coral, and for a little while she watched the pair with a vacant, half-conscious gaze, but as he turned suddenly towards her, a look of awakened life and recognition, followed by a flash of disgust and abhorrence, came into her eyes, a shudder passed over her face, and then she sank her head, and remained motionless as before. This man was Fred O’Brien; he had remained with the Indians who had taken him from Beer’s Creek ever since; for some time he had been seriously ill from the effects of the fall over the cliff, but the squaws had nursed him with great care, and on his recovery, whether moved by pity which melts the soul to love, or won by his handsome face, the young daughter of the chief fell in love with him. She was the old man’s only child, the daughter of a favourite wife, now dead, and had always been petted and indulged in a manner very unusual among the Indians, and her father’s reluctance to thwart her inclinations, and her haughty determination to marry no one but O’Brien, aided by the character for eloquence, bravery, and ability be bore among the tribe, induced the old chief to offer her to him