It was a glorious morning in autumn. The whole space around the settlement was one vast forest, and the frost had tipped the leaves of the trees with russet crimson and gold. The bare sumac lifted its red core on high, and the crab apple hung its bright fruit over every crag. The maple shook its blood-colored leaves around, and the chesnut and walnut came pattering down from their lofty heights, like hail from a summer cloud. The heath hens sate drumming the morning away upon the mouldering trunks, whose tops had waved above the giants of the forest in former ages. The grey squirrel sprang from limb to limb. The flying squirrel sailed from tree to tree in his downward flight; and the growling wild cat glided swiftly down the vistas of the wood with her shrieking prey. The blue jay piped all hands from the deep woods—and the hawk, as he sailed over the partridge’s brood, shrieked the wild death cry of the air. A haze rested upon the distant heights, and a cloud of mellow light rolled over the little settlement, and faded into silver upon the broad sound that stretched out before it. It was nearly noon when the lovers—whose conversation on such an occasion I must leave the reader to imagine—turned from the enchanting prospect, which at this day exceeds any thing in America—to return to the settlement. Two Indians, of the Narragansett tribe, now bounded from the thicket, and before Foster could bring his musketoon to its rest—for he always went armed—they levelled him to the earth. A green withe was speedily twined around his arms, and he was apparently as powerless as a child. Grace sprang to a little path that led to the parapet of the bluff and screamed for help; that scream was her salvation, for the Indian who was binding Foster’s hands, left the withe loose, and sprang toward her. In a moment the rude hand of the red-man rested heavily upon her shoulder, and his grim look sent the blood tingling from her cheeks. Another withe was speedily passed around her arms, and then the two Narragansetts seated themselves to make a hurdle to bear the pale faced maiden away. As they were busily engaged Grace heard a whisper behind her. She turned her head half round—Foster, by great exertions, had got loose from his withe, and was crawling slowly toward his musketoon. The Narragansetts, suspecting nothing, were sitting behind a little clump of sassafras, and nothing but their brawny chests could be seen through a small bend in the trunks of the trees that composed the thicket. Stealthily crept the experienced Foster to the tree where his musketoon rested. Not a crackling twig, nor rustling leaf, gave the slightest evidence of his movements. The Indians spoke in their own wild gutterals of the beauty of the pale-faced squaw, and chuckled with delight at the speedy prospect of roasting the young long knife by Philip’s council fire.