On the shore of Roanoke, under the eastern cliff, a young Indian stood alone, listening. Tall and straight as a spear, his dark form, undraped, save at the loins, suggested, in the moment of immobility, a bronze statue, fresh from a master-hand. The attentive poise, the keen, expectant eyes, the head thrown back, implied in every muscle and outline a mystery, for the whisper of whose voice he waited breathless. But, as the desired sound was not forthcoming, the spell broke suddenly. He moved, and the all-unconscious pose was lost in activity. With light steps that seemed to fall upon an ethereal roadway, even less solid than the shifting sands, he went to a copse of trees beneath the cliff and, bending forward, scanned the long vines and grasses that ran wild beneath his feet. Through the canopy of green above him a host of sun-rays made their way, and, separating into a myriad golden motes, played in and out amid the maze of cedar-roots that met his eyes. A breeze, laden with the fragrance of numberless shrubs and vagrant flowers, stirred the straight black strands of his hair, to which the sun lent a lustrous gloss like the sheen of a raven’s wing. Was it only the air, fresh and warm with midsummer balm, that filled him to the flood with ardent life? Was it merely the sun that kindled those lights in his eyes, and only the free flux of animal spirits that possessed him? The eagerness of his quest gave answer, and even the song-birds, now in silence watching him from high above, seemed to divine that here was no intruding fowler, no mere hawk more powerful than themselves. Again he paused, listening, and now the intent look changed to an expression of apprehension and dismay. The statue of Hope was transformed to a figure of Alarm; the pleasure of seeking to the disquietude of a search in vain. Suddenly, however, from the branch of an oak-tree, in the heart of whose shadow he stood, a voice came down to him, blithe, merry, triumphant, and the voice, for all its melody, was not a bird’s. “Dark Eye, the White Doe is here.” He looked up, smiling, and somewhat mortified, but not long, for in a minute the maid, who had outwitted him in their game of hide-and-seek, stood on the ground, her laughing eyes and words bantering him without mercy. “Oh, what availeth the speed and craft of Dark Eye when the White Doe hides?” “Virginia,” he said, pronouncing the name with difficulty, “thou art no white doe, but a spirit of the woods.”