Cloud pricked up his ears, and the hound gazed at his master inquiringly. But Verty was musing; his large, dreamy eyes were fixed with unalterable attention upon vacancy, and his drooping shoulders, whereon lay the tangled mass of his chestnut hair, swayed regularly as he moved. It only mingled with his musings--the bright scene--and grew a part of them; he scarcely saw it. "Yes," he murmured, "yes, I think I am a Delaware!--a white? to dream it! am I mad? The wild night-wind must have whispered to me while I slept, and gone away laughing at me. I, the savage, the simple savage, to think this was so! And yet--yes, yes--I did think so! Redbud said it was thus--Redbud!" And the young man for a time was silent. "I wonder what Redbud thinks of me?" he murmured again, with his old dreamy smile. "Can she find anything to like in me? What am I? Poor, poor Verty--you are very weak, and the stream here is laughing at you. You are a poor forest boy--there can be nothing in you for Redbud to like. Oh! if she could! But we are friends, I know--about the other, why think? what is it? Love!--what is love? It must be something strange--or why do I feel as if to be friends was not enough? Love!" And Verty's head drooped. "Love, love!" he murmured. "Oh, yes! I know what it means! They laugh at it--but they ought not to. It is heaven in the heart--sunshine in the breast. Oh, I feel that what I mean by love is purer than the whole wide world besides! Yes, yes--because I would die for her! I would give my life to save her any suffering--her hand on my forehead would be dearer and sweeter than the cool spring in the hills after a weary, day-long hunt, when I come to it with hot cheeks and burnt-up throat! Oh, yes! I may be an Indian, and be different--but this is all to me--this feeling, as if I must go to her, and kneel down and tell her that my life is gone from me when I am not near her--that I walk and live like a man dreaming, when she does not smile on me and speak to me!" Verty's head drooped, and his cheeks reddened with the ingenuous blush of boyhood. Then he raised his head, and murmured, with a smile, which made his face beautiful--so full of light and joy was it. "Yes--I think I am in love with Redbud--and she does not think it wrong, I am sure--oh, I don't think she will think it wrong in me, and turn against me, only because I love her!"