loved best, and the wonderful adventures he could relate, in language vivid and exciting as ever stole the heart of ardent youth, could not overcome the boy’s dislike, which every day seemed to increase, till it settled into a steady antipathy which he scarcely took any pains to conceal. At first, O’Brien tried to conciliate him, but, finding his efforts useless, he attempted to gain some power over him by fear, but he soon found the lad’s firmness and courage were not to be subdued, and thus gradually a tacit agreement, to avoid each other as much as possible, appeared to be established between them.
CHAPTER III.
Among the first of those who had settled in Long Arrow was an old soldier, named Brady, with his wife and son about the age of Keefe Dillon. He, too, was an Irishman, idle, thoughtless, and intemperate; but honest and kind-hearted. His wife was untidy and improvident, and her husband declared that her tongue was endowed with perpetual motion. The boy Denis was a light-hearted, merry, impulsive, little urchin, but generous, frank, and true. They were accompanied by an Indian hunter and his daughter, the former a morose, taciturn, old man, the latter a child of singular beauty. Her mother, it was said, had been a French woman, and certainly her looks bore few traces of Indian blood. Her complexion was of a snowy fairness no wind or sun could embrown; her cheek bloomed like a wild rose, a bright smile was for ever playing round her soft crimson lips, and rich curls of shining brown fell over her shoulders; her eyes were a soft brown, full of varying expression, sometimes wild and flashing, sometimes sweet and tender, oftenest timid and beseeching. “Her qualities were gentle as her form,”—bright imaginative fancies and sweet loving impulses ruled her being, in which the sparkling gladness of morn and the soft tenderness of even seemed blended like some tiny rivulet of her native wilds, in whose crystal purity the flowers around and the stars above glassed themselves, hidden in the forest depths and visited only by the gentlest winds of heaven.
She could not remember her mother, and her father’s gloom and sternness were more calculated to excite fear than love. She had never had any companion of her own age, and her affections, deprived of their natural channels, turned towards the birds, the insects, and gentle little animals that peopled the forest. In the trees and flowers, in the angel-like stars and weird clouds, in the whispers of the leaves, the murmurs of the streams, the voices of the winds, she sought society and fellowship, and dwelt in a world of her own as much removed from common life as fabled fairy-land. When she was about eight years old she came to Long Arrow, and from that time she lived chiefly with the Bradys while her father hunted in still wilder districts, and but rarely visited the settlement. Any motherless waif on life’s rough shore would have been sure of shelter and food from these warm-hearted though rude people, but the little Indian’s beauty and winning manners were powerful pleaders in her favour. Even Nelly herself checked the menace just falling from her lips, or the blow tingling at her fingers’ ends, when Coral was the offender, and one of the very few instances in which old Brady, who loved a quiet life above all things, had been known to resist the will of his termagant spouse, was, in putting a decisive stop to her hasty and injudicious attempts at converting the “poor innocent,” as she called her, from a wild savage to a tame Christian—a metamorphosis which her husband had sense to see was far beyond her skill. At first, his declaration that Coral was to do nothing but what she choose, and was to be left to follow the ways of her own people in peace and quietness caused many a battle between him and his angry helpmate; but when he was sufficiently roused to exert his authority, even Nelly durst not oppose it: so she submitted as quietly as her temper permitted, only warning him that he might be sorry yet for making such a fool of the child, if he saw his own son disgracing himself by taking a wild Indian for his wife: and it was her belief she had put a spell over the boy already. It was very true that the Indian girl had cast a spell over Denis Brady’s warm heart, but of any darker magic than the witchcraft of childish and unconscious beauty she was utterly innocent. He loved her with almost idolatrous fondness, and from the first time he saw her, lent all his energies to conquer her shyness and reserve, and gain at least some portion of affection in return.
He showed her where the blue clusters of the whortleberry were bending to the ground, and where the scarlet cranberry lay hid among the thick moss; he waded into the lake to get her the silver chalices of the white water-lilies, and he brought her the smoothest and glossiest birch bark in the forest, to make the pretty Indian toys she ornamented so skilfully. At first he attempted to propitiate her favours by shooting the most brilliant coloured birds in the woods and bringing them to her, but she turned from them, with tears of passionate grief, lamenting their death almost as a mother might lament the loss of her child; and her sorrow moved Denis so much, that it was some time before he again aimed his gun at any of her harmless favourites. Her gentle heart soon opened to his kind nature and gay temper, and he won from her at least half the love that had been devoted to the flowers and the birds. For a long time these were his only rivals. The children of the settlers generally shunned her with mysterious awe, believing her half-crazed, or uncanny, and if they by chance encountered her, fled from her with scornful taunts, till two or three severe lessons from Denis taught them to refrain from open insult towards one who had so stout and determined a protector. On one occasion Keefe Dillon put a troop of her tormentors to flight, and he, far from sharing their doubts as to her sanity or human origin, thought her face the loveliest he had ever beheld. But she gave him no chance of improving their acquaintance then, her shyness prevailing over her gratitude, and she fled from him like a wild bird. A few days after this occurred she was going out to fish with Denis, and getting down to the shore before him, jumped into the canoe, and paddled it into deep water. It was a