It was at this critical instant that I, the editor of these papers, chanced to come up to where this scene was being enacted. A few words sufficed for an introduction, and on that spot begun a friendship between us all that death himself is powerless to break. Two hours thereafter, the chief, his son, the girl, the youth, were, with myself, partaking of a friendly meal at the old man’s house. After the repast was over, the conversation took a philosophic turn, in which the chief, who was a really splendid specimen of the cultivated Indian, took an active and interested part. Presently the old people took their pipes, the younger ones went to bed, and Beverly and ’Levambea, as she was almost universally called, walked out, and sat them down beneath an old sycamore that stretched its giant limbs like the genius of protection over the cottage. There they talked gaily enough at first, but presently in a tender and pathetic strain; and it was clear that there had sprung up between them already something much warmer than friendship, yet which was not love. When they rose to enter the house, the last words uttered by the girl--uttered in the same singularly inspired strain observed on their first meeting--were, “Yes! I _will_ love you; but not _here_, not _now_, perhaps not on _this_ earth. Yet I will be your prop, your stay, though deep seas between us roll. Listen! When I am in danger you will know it, wherever you may be. When you are in danger you will see me. Forget not what I say. Ask me no questions. Your fate is a singular one, but not more so than my own. Good night! Good-bye! We will see each other no more at present--_it is not permitted_!” And without another word she abruptly left him, darted into the house, passed up the stairs, and was gone like a spirit.