Almost at the same instant, I saw the young hunter hurriedly draw back his horse--as if to get out of the way. I fancied that the crisis had arrived, when my presence might be required. Under this belief, I touched my steed with the spur, and trotted out into the open ground. To my astonishment, I perceived that the hunter was alone. Su-wa-nee had disappeared from the glade! CHAPTER FIFTEEN. MAKING A CLEAN BREAST OF IT. "Where is she?--gone?" I mechanically asked, in a tone that must have betrayed my surprise. "Yes--gone! gone! an' wi' a Mormon!" "A Mormon?" "Ay, stranger, a Mormon--a man wi' twenty wives! God forgi' her! I'd rather heerd o' her death!" "Was there a man with her? I saw no one." "O stranger, excuse my talk--you're thinkin' o' that ere Injun girl. 'Taint her I'm speakin' about." "Who then?" The young hunter hesitated: he was not aware that I was already in possession of his secret; but he knew that I had been witness of his emotions, and to declare the name would be to reveal the most sacred thought of his heart. Only for a moment did he appear to reflect; and then, as if relieved from his embarrassment, by some sudden determination, he replied: "Stranger! I don't see why I shedn't tell ye all about this bisness. I don know the reezun, but you've made me feel a kind o' confidence in you. I know it's a silly sort o' thing to fall in love wi' a handsum girl; but if ye'd only seen _her_!" "I have no doubt, from what you say, she was a beautiful creature,"-- this was scarcely my thought at the moment--"and as for falling in love with a pretty girl, none of us are exempt from that little weakness. The proud Roman conqueror yielded to the seductions of the brown-skinned Egyptian queen; and even Hercules himself was conquered by a woman's charms. There is no particular silliness in that. It is but the common destiny of man." "Well, stranger, it's been myen; an' I've hed reezun to be sorry for it. But it's no use tryin' to shet up the stable arter the hoss's been stole out o't. She are gone now; an' that's the end o' it. I reckon I'll niver set eyes on her agin." The sigh that accompanied this last observation, with the melancholy tone in which it was uttered, told me that I was talking to a man who had truly loved. "No doubt," thought I, "some strapping backwoods wench has been the object of his passion,"--for what other idea could I have about the child of a coarse and illiterate squatter? "Love is as blind as a bat; and this red-haired hoyden has appeared a perfect Venus in the eyes of the handsome fellow--as not unfrequently happens. A Venus with evidently a slight admixture of the prudential Juno in her composition. The young backwoodsman is poor; the schoolmaster perhaps a little better off; in all probability not much, but enough to decide the preference of the shrewd Marian." Such were my reflections at the moment, partly suggested by my own experience.