With this elegant finish, the speaker glides rapidly round the end of the fallen tree, and makes for the nearest underwood--evidently with the design of screening himself from sight. He is too late--as the "Ugh" uttered on the opposite side of the glade convinces him--and changing his intention, he fronts round, and quietly returns to his former position upon the log. The hunter's conjecture has proved correct. Bronzed faces show themselves over the tops of the bushes on the opposite edge of the glade; and, the moment after, three Indians emerge into the open ground. That they are Indians, their tatterdemalion dress of coloured blankets, leggings, and mocassins would indicate; but their race is even recognisable in their mode of march. Though there are but three of them, and the path runs no longer among trees, they follow one another in single file, and in the true typical "trot" of the red aboriginal. The presence of Indians in these woods requires explanation--for their tribe has long before this time been transported to their new lands west of the Mississippi. It only needs to be said that a few families have preferred to remain--some from attachment to the scenes of their youth, not to be severed by the prospect of a far happier home; some from associations formed with the whites; and some from more trivial causes-- perhaps from being the degraded outcasts of their tribes. Throughout the whole region of the backwoods, there still exists a sparse population of the indigenous race: dwelling, as their ancestors did, under tents or in the open air; trafficking in small articles of their own manufacture; in short, performing very much the same _metier_ as the Gitanos in Europe. There are other points of resemblance between these two races--amounting almost to family likeness--and which fairly entitles the Indians to an appellation sometimes bestowed upon them--_the Gipsies of the New World_. The three Indians who have entered the glade are manifestly what is termed an "Indian family" or part of one. They are father, and mother, and daughter--the last a girl just grown to womanhood. The man is in the lead, the woman follows, and the young girl brings up the rear. They are bent upon a journey, and its object is also manifest. The pannier borne upon the back of the woman, containing fox and coon-skins, with little baskets of stained wicker--and the bead-embroidered mocassins and wampum belts that appear in the hands of the girl--bespeak a purposed visit to the settlement of Swampville. True to the custom "of his fathers," the Indian himself carries nothing--if we except a long rusty gun over his shoulder, and a small hatchet in his belt: rendering him rather a formidable-looking fellow on his way to a market. CHAPTER FOUR. THE CATASTROPHE OF A KISS.