And behold the green hills in distance laid, Where the wild hunter often strayed, Where through the forest swift as light The wild deer shunned the bullets' flight. CHAPTER III. Summer had resigned her sway to Autumn in the green valleys of the Susquehanna and her tributaries, which spread out among the hills like the branches of some mighty forest tree, over whose curving and playful waters the green plumes of the forest trees had waved during the summer, now changed with the season; and Summer, the queen of flowers and ripening fruit, had wrapped herself in a mantle of green, and laid down to die as the sun gradually declined to southern skies and the Autumn Queen put on her gorgeous robes of many colors. The squirrel was seen to play on nimble feet through oak and chestnut groves gathering in his winter store. The deer, with her fawn, wandered through the grove unmolested, excepting at such times as Mayall needed venison for his own table. One day, while seated beneath the vine-clad porch of his cabin, where the vines had been trained by his wife to tie in leafy coil over the door, he saw a woman in homespun dress advancing with hurried steps, weeping and mourning as she advanced towards him, and fell exhausted at his feet. Mayall raised her from the ground and inquired the cause of her grief. She soon recovered sufficiently to inform him that a party of nine Indian hunters had been prowling about her cabin for a couple of days, and that morning they had stolen her little daughter Nelly, but four years old, and bore her away in triumph without any regard to her screams or the lamentations of her mother for her only child. Mayall listened with pity and grief to the poor woman's tale of woe, and impatiently said, "Why did not your husband follow the black thieves and bring back your child?" "Oh dear," cried the poor woman, "what could he do with so many Indians?" Mayall replied, "Follow them, and when a good opportunity offered, kill them, shoot the thieves and bring back your child. Better die like a man than live a coward here in this forest land, dreaming of robber band that bore away his only child to be a slave in some proud savage's smoky hut." At this reply the woman became frantic with despair and cried out, "Oh, Mayall, for mercy save my child. You are the only man now living that can do it, and I will give you all I possess on earth and be your slave in the bargain."