A flush reddened Barbara Stafford's forehead as she bent it with a gentle sign of acquiescence. The chief gave some orders in their own tongue, and the Indians instantly fell to work cutting away wet branches from the hemlocks and pines, tearing green bark from the giant elms, and felling young saplings, which they planted in the earth, and curved downward in the form of a tent. Over these they laid the bark, and covered the whole with green boughs, till a bower was formed worthy of a wood nymph. Two of the Indians brought great fleeces of moss down from the ledges and heaped a couch with them, and over all a noble white pine spread its massy branches, through which the full moon sent a thousand gleams of silver, as if laughing at the bank of storm clouds from which it had just escaped. Upon the couch of moss which his people had heaped in this bower, the young chief spread a robe of skins, and laid his blanket, which he unwound from his shoulders. Then, with the air of a prince offering the hospitality of a royal palace, he approached Barbara Stafford where she sat by the fire, and led her to the shelter provided for her. Barbara was greatly moved. With an impulse of thankfulness, she bent down and kissed the young chief's hand as he was about to withdraw it from hers; but it trembled like a wounded bird beneath her touch, and his magnificent eyes filled with tears--the shame of an Indian's soul. Angry with his weakness, the young man turned from her and dashed away into the woods. When Barbara awoke in the morning, for fatigue made her sleep heavy, she inquired for the young man. The Indians answered that he had gone deeper into the wilderness, where the main body of his tribe lay, and when a cabin was prepared for her reception, he would come back again; till then the five warriors whom he had left behind would protect her with their lives. CHAPTER XXXIX. TAKEN CAPTIVE. Samuel Parris bore his daughter home and laid her on her own white bed, where she writhed like a wounded fawn in the snow. Her face was rosy with flushes, that came and went like gleams of light on marble; her lips were in constant motion; she muttered continually about Barbara Stafford and Norman Lovel. Sometimes she called aloud for her mother, and declared with child-like earnestness that she saw her gliding through the room with her golden hair smoothed under a close cap, and a white dress sweeping around her like the wings of an angel. The old minister listened to all this in stern sorrow. His ewe lamb was smitten down before his eyes: God had suffered his idolatrous love to find a terrible punishment. What could he do? how act to save that beautiful one from perdition? Norman Lovel was sad. Barbara Stafford had disappeared like a myth. His approach seemed to have driven her away, and he found Elizabeth, from whom he had parted in anger, writhing on a bed of pain, muttering her wild fancies and crying aloud for help.