from his scalping friends, he wandered into the meadow, and sitting down beside the clear, cold stream, he first slaked his thirst, and withdrawing his boots he dipped one foot, then the other, into the refreshing water;—then he laved his whole person, the merry, laughing sprites, meantime, splashing and dashing him with the white spray from over the great rocks, down which the glittering waters foamed and danced.
A most plentiful breakfast had he there from the sweet, wild strawberries, which grew around him in the utmost luxuriance, upon that fertile meadow-land.
The wood-robin, the wren, and the blue-bird, sang for him their sweetest songs while he tarried among them. Feeling himself fully rested, at length he sought, with a new life, the road again, and proceeded on toward the settlement.
THE SISTERS.
Just as the “dark-eyed Antelope” had come within hearing of the village noises—a welcome sound to his heart—such as the barking of dogs, the ploughboy’s loud “gee, whoa,” the merry, ringing voice of children at play,—just as he reached the well-known “Devil’s Rock,” after passing old “Haystack,” that venerable mountain-hill, rising up grim and dark at his right hand, he was startled with the sudden step of a deer as it bounded lightly out from the woods into the road. But the deer proved to be a two-footed dear—and two pretty and nimble little feet they were—and, as they sped on, from the same path in the thick greenwood, out popped another dear little maiden in fleet pursuit of the first. A hasty and casual glance was all the little fairies, or whatever they were, vouchsafed the traveller. He watched them in their airy course until a bend in the road hid them from his view. Their silvery laugh, still sounding in his ear, reminded him of all the wild and beautiful things he had ever read in fairy-lore, or thought in his own bright imaginings. With the superstition of those early times, any one might have been justifiable in fancying the flying
