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��AHWANEGA.
��of a giant brave — here, a flinted arrow pierced the heart of some young warrior — there, in deadly embrace, two painted forms struggle for the mastery, until the sharp bone-like knife pierces the heart and a strong life goes out in a demonical yell. There were deeds of valor and acts of bravery among those forest shadows, that the sun only, or the stars looked down upon, worthy to be recorded with those of the bold knights of the Crusades around the walls of Jerusalem. But the end came and the invaders were victori- ous — from mountain to mountain, the signal fires flashed back the result, until the beacon flamed above and along the valley of the Mohawk. The fight was won, but not the maiden. True to her love, she shrank not from the strife of which herself was the cause ; whereso- ever the contest raged the fiercest, there fell the blows of the Mohegan brave, and where waved his eagle plume, by his side was the fearless girl; twice she warned him of pending danger and saved him; twice with her own hand, she warded off" the murderous hatchet that would have sent him from her far away ; at length the moment for flight came and she was by his side when the last swing of his giant arm crushed the skull of the foremost Mohawk warrior and she saw her brother sent to the blessed hunting grounds.
The mournful death- songs had hardly ceased to echo through the forest arches, when along the shadows of the river's bank glided six canoes impelled by strong arms against the stream. In vain, the conquerors sought the trail of their ene- mies; in vain, hill and valley were searched day after day, for the daughter of their old chief and her captor ; and when the spring sun grew warm and the forest shadows were full, and dark, the hunt was abandoned, and the Mohawks and their Pequot allies, returned to their own lands, beyond the western wa- ters, and the stars looked calmly down on the graves of the forgotten.
Just across here, near the foot of the cliff yonder, in a grove of ancient oaks, was a band of warriors and a few female attendants, guarding with jealous care the chosen, well-won bride of their be-
��loved chief. The royal lodge was hung thickly around with the skins of the wolf and the bear, and in a retired nook there- of was a couch, furnished by the otter and the beaver. Here, among these rug- ged fastnesses, they felt themselves safely concealed ; she from a hated Pequot lov- er and he from the wrath of the warlike Mohawks. One afternoon in the mid summer, the "Wild Fawn" had been lis- tening long at the door of their lodge for the expected signal which should an- nounce the return of the absent loved one from a two days chase. He was be- yond the mountains toward the great river; a country abounding in game. Soon the expected whoop rang clearly out across the valley, returning in wild echoes from the opposite hills ; and with a bound like a frightened doe, she sprang away and up the mountain side to greet him upon the summit of the cliff, — a fa- vorite resort — and there they met; he clasping her in his brawny arms and their lips meeting in the impassioned kiss of love. The greeting over, they sat there in the gathering twilight, and he related the incidents of his long absence, and then they talked of the world, as they saw it ; the distant rocky heights now grand in the glories of the setting sun, where the Great Spirit talked to them in the tempest ; then of the nearer green hills that sent forth the sparkling waters, musically murmuring below — "Onawan- da" they called it, signifying "Water born among the hills." And then they conversed of other lands, and other times, ere they were wanderers from their tribes and their distant homes. Sitting there in a seat formed by the rocks and the mosses, they saw not a stealthy form, creeping, cat-like, from tree to bush, and from rock to shadow, with the demon eyes of a painted savage ; they heard no rustling among the leaves, or crackling of dry twigs upon the ground ; naught but the sighing of the wind among the branches of the hemlock above them, the dash of the waters through the distant glen, and the beating of their own hearts. The twang of a bow-string startled them both to their feet and the next instant a flinted arrow was quivering in the side of the Mohegan
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