The sky was intensely blue, and without a cloud. The elasticity of the air excited the young spirits of Edith. She was gay, and, like a young fawn, she fluttered around her father, sometimes galloping her rough little pony in front, and then returning, she would give a gentle cut with her whip to her father's horse, who, with head down, and plodding indifference, regarded it no more than he did a fly. Mr. Grafton, delighted with his daughter's playfulness, looked at her with a quiet, tender smile: her gayety, to him, was like the play of her infancy, and he delighted to think that she was yet young and happy. Edith had ridden forward, and they had lost sight of her, when she came galloping back, pale as death, and hardly able to retain her seat from terror. "Edith, my child," said her father, "what has happened?" She could only point with her finger to a thin column of blue smoke that curled above the trees. Mr. Grafton knew that it indicated the presence of Indians, at this time the terror of all the inhabitants. "No doubt they are friendly, my dear child," said Mr. Grafton; and he sent Paul, who was armed, forward to reconnoitre. Paul soon returned, showing his white teeth from ear to ear. "The piccaninnies," he said. Mr. Grafton and Edith rode forward, and in a little hollow at the foot of a rock, from which bubbled a clear spring, a young Indian woman, with a pappoose at her feet, was half reclining; another child, attached in its birch cradle to the pendent branch of an elm tree, was gently rocked by the wind. A fire was built against the rock, and venison suspended before it to roast. It was a beautiful little domestic scene, and Mr. Grafton and Edith stopped to contemplate it. They soon learned that the husband of the Indian was in the forest; but he was friendly, and, after exchanging smiles, Edith dismounted. She sat on the grass, caressing the young pappoose, and talked with the mother in that untaught, mute language that young and kind hearts so easily understand. This little adventure delayed them so long that it was past noon when they reached the secluded farmhouse we have described in the first chapter of our little tale. The old man was sitting at the door, enjoying the kindly warmth of the declining sun. Seymore was not far off, at work in his laborer's frock. A vivid blush of surprise, and pleasure, and shame, covered his temples and noble brow, as he came forward to meet them. Edith, quick in her perceptions, understood his feelings, and turned aside her head while he drew off his laborer's frock. This gave an appearance of embarrassment to her first greeting, and the vivid delight faded in a moment from his brilliant countenance, and a melancholy shade passed over it. They entered the house, and Edith endeavored to remove the pain she had given, by more marked attention to Seymore; but simple and sincere, ignorant as she was of all arts of coquetry, it only increased the bashfulness of her manner.