It is the hand of destiny that shapes our lot; we may war against it, but we cannot control it.” The spring of the young Indian’s activity seemed gone. He no longer took delight in the difficult and perilous adventure. He wandered amid the solitude of nature, only to indulge the musings of a sensitive and unhappy mind. {743} Colonel Carlisle marked, with deep interest, the change which had come over the boy. He knew too well the silent, dignified fortitude of the Indian, to make any direct inquiry as to the cause of his sadness. His sympathy was only shown in redoubled acts of kindness, which availed nothing but to make Arrowfoot throw a deeper covering of reserve over his feelings, and avoid, as much as possible, the society of those he loved best. Months passed away, and still there was on his countenance, “the settled shadow of an inward strife.” The cause was a mystery to all, but it acted as a check upon the full tide of joyful existence, which animated Eva and Eldred. The lapse of two years wrote its changes on the brows of all that household. In Eva, the lovely child expanded into the fair and beautiful proportions of womanhood. Eldred’s pale cheek was exchanged for the ruddy glow of health and exercise, and his frame became more vigorous as he grew old enough to share the mountain sports of the young Indian, who, now tall and athletic, displayed all the physical powers of his race. His constitutional fortitude, strengthened by the habits of reflection acquired in civilized life, enabled him to bear his fate with great endurance; and he looked on the object of his affections with the fixed and melancholy gaze, which some lovely wanderer might cast towards the pure star, that shone bright and far, above him. He sought not to attain her; he made no effort even to gain her sympathy: but his way was not altogether so dark as if the beam had been withdrawn. Colonel Carlisle had resided in Pennsylvania from early manhood: one sister shared with him the valuable funded property left by their father, a wealthy Bristol merchant; but a large proportion of the estate he had realized, was vested in land, which, according to the custom of the country, only descended in the male line. The feeble state of Eldred’s health through infancy and childhood, led many to anticipate the time when these large estates would pass from Colonel Carlisle’s family, to that of his sister; who, married to an East Indian, was the mother of a wild and roving boy. Communication was tardy and uncertain in those days; for the hidden powers of earth, air and water, had not then been called into action, by the commanding energies of man; and Colonel Carlisle having united his fortune with the early adventurers in the colonies, while animated by the ardor of youth, soon felt that the ties which bound him to the home of his childhood, were feeble, compared with those man frames for himself in maturer years.