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Let it bring no reproach to the manhood of Max
Greyslaer, that now, in the very prime of youthful
vigour, with a frame schooled by hardship to endurance
of every kind, he must still depend upon female
address to deliver him from bondage.

Twice already had he attempted, at the free peril
of his life, to regain his liberty; once, as we have
before seen, when, lost in the mazes of the forest,
he rushed again unawares directly into the arms
of his enemy; and again, during his abode in The
Thunder's Nest, he had, when nearly succeeding
in the attempt, been overtaken in the deep snow-drifts,
amid which he must have perished, even if
successful, and hurried back in triumph to the Indian
camp.

Then, upon this second recapture, he had undergone
all the horrors of mind which must precede a
death of Indian torture with those who have read or
heard of its cruelly ingenious and protracted agonies.
He had been subjected to all the savage
preparations for the stake, and had then confronted

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death in its most awful shape. He had seen the
flames kindled around him. The fire-tipped arrows
had been shot into his body, and torments far more
excruciating were about to follow, when, as an Indian
beldame advanced to tear the only remaining
strip of vesture from his body, the totem of Brant
imprinted upon it was revealed to the hellish crew
of executioners around him, and saved him from a
death so horrible.

Since that moment, though still strictly guarded,
he had been treated with all the forbearance which
characterized the conduct of the party which had
brought him hither, though they had long since gone
off and left him in other hands. But as, though
wearing the insignia of an immediate follower of
Thayendanagea, he had never undergone the ceremony
of being formally adopted into any tribe of the
Mohawks, he was conscious that his change of treatment
arose only from his being now regarded rather
as a slave than a prisoner. He was determined
once more to seize an opportunity to escape, and to
perish rather than be retaken. He relied much,
however, it must be confessed, upon The Dew to
make such opportunity for him. Nor was that hope
and confidence misplaced.

Greyslaer, though much given to that half romantic,
half philosophic mood of wrapping one's self
up in one's own dreams and speculations, which
belongs to that inexperienced season of life when
we value our own thoughts far more than the material
objects around us, was still not deficient in
keen and curious observation of character. And for
months it had been one of his chief mental resources
to study the personal traits and peculiarities of
the singular people among whom his present lot
was cast.

He was sitting one morning a little aloof from a

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group of loungers of all sexes and sizes, listening
to a rude legend which an old woman, employed in
weaving mats, was relating for their edification.
The wild tradition with which she was engaged related
to those strange subterranean sounds which
are still, from time to time, heard among these
mountains. She told of some bold hunter who went
out determining to trace the spot whence these
groanings of the earth had travelled out. And
Greyslaer, who had looked with a curious eye upon
the remarkable peculiarities of this volcanic region,
bent near to hear how the strange fancy of an Iroquois
would account for natural phenomena to whose
existence he himself could bear testimony.

At this moment the report of a gun was heard
not far off. It probably was discharged by some
hunter belonging to the camp, and excited no attention
among the listening group. Presently, however,
The Dew, who had gone down to the shore of
the lake to bring water, appeared, and saying aloud
that the hunter who had just fired needed the assistance
of the white man in bringing some game to
camp, motioned Greyslaer the direction in which he
should go, which, strangely enough, was in an opposite
direction from that whence the sound came.
The others were too much engaged with the story-teller
to notice the discrepance, whose purport, however,
was intuitively understood by the prisoner;
and, before the approaching hunter had reached the
camp on one side, he had gained a considerable distance
on the other. He pierced far into the ravine
through which the waters of the lake discharge
themselves from the hollow, and now only hesitated
which way to turn his steps. The ravine, though
at first distinctly defined, had, within a few hundred
yards of the lake, so broadened and broken up into
a thousand rocky inequalities, that it was

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impossible, as the forest thickened around him, to tell what
route to take in order to descend the mountain. The
outlet of the lake would seem to have been a sufficient
guide; but this, a mere rill at its commencement,
was broken up into a hundred slender threads
of water, which, losing themselves now among matted
leaves, and now creeping beneath the mossy
woof which wraps the living rocks and the rotten
trunks wedged between them, in the same green vesture,
served only to distract the judgment that would
lean upon them as a guide. Greyslaer, in fact, had
only gained a lower and broader basin than that
which held the waters of the lake; and though it
likewise was walled round by craggy pinnacles, yet
here there was a heavy forest-growth; and these
barriers themselves, as well as the passage through
them, were wholly screened from view by the intervening
foliage.

But now, darting like a bird from the green
wood covert, The Dew suddenly presents herself
in the path before him, and beckons Greyslaer onward.
As yet there are no signs of pursuit behind;
but the moments are precious; for the descent
of the mountain abounds in difficulties, and
they have still a ravine to gain and a narrow gorge
to pass through before gaining the bottom; a gorge
so narrow that it might serve as a gateway to this
labyrinth of natural fortifications; and here a single
armed man might prevent their egress. The maiden
now doubts for a moment what path to take.
The sides of the ravine may be the safest, if they
would avoid any chance wanderers returning to the
Indian camp from the valley below. But these are
every here and there broken by tall benches of rock
too high to leap from, and doubling the toil of those
who ever and anon must climb over the loose stones
around their base. The girl, therefore, descends

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still farther into the Hollow, where a sloping pavement
of smooth rock, some hundred yards in length,
seams the mountain. It looks as if it had been
once overlaid by soil and forest growth like that
around; but the stratum of matted roots and earths
has been peeled off the steep declivity, and the fountains
of a rivulet, oozing out from the compost of
leaves and fibres which still overlay the upper end
of the slope, glide with thin and noiseless flow over
the naked rock. And now, as the shallow rill deepens
into a brook, which gurgles among the loose
boulders, they follow it down as it keeps its way
through an easy swale of less broken land.

The woods upon its banks are here an open
growth of ash and maple; and Greyslaer's confidence
in the sagacity of his guide was for a moment
shaken when he saw her persist in keeping her
way along so exposed a path. He thought that they
had already gained the base of the mountain, from
the lofty and frowning cliffs of rock which now and
then he could descry afar off, lifting themselves
above the tree-tops around. He would fain have
struck off to some thickets which, through these
open glades, could be plainly seen crowning the
lower and nearer ridges of rock that traversed the
hillsides above them.

But the girl directed his attention in advance,
and, for the first time, he saw the sunshine playing
upon some spruce and cedar tree-tops that were immediately
upon a level with his line of vision. She
pointed to the brook, still their emulous companion,
and he understood at once that it must have some
sudden fall where those trees were growing. There
must be a change of soil, rocks, and thickets there;
a swamp, perhaps, and possibly one or more tributaries
to the brook ere it reached the plain below.
And, truly enough, the sound of a waterfall soon

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greeted his ears. The sides of the swale became
steeper, and it narrowed at last suddenly as if the
ground had sunk. There were irregular walls of
stone on either side, with springs welling here and
there from their mossy intervals. Loose boulders
clogged up the main current of the brook, which,
foaming and fretting for a while, emerged at last from
the rocky gorge, and took up a more stately march
through the heavy forests that spread themselves
over a richer soil below.

The fugitives followed on until that guiding water
reached the Upper Hudson, where their toilsome
descent from the Thunder's Nest, but not the peril
of their flight, was ended.

The spot where they first gained the banks of
the wild and romantic river of the North was a
few miles above that beautiful pass called Teohoken
by the Indians, where the dark-rolling waters
which form the outlet of Scroon Lake sweep into the
Hudson. Here Greyslaer quickly constructed a
raft from the floating timbers which he found in profusion
in the eddies of the stream; and the two
voyagers drifted down with the current, till, reaching
the rapids at the approach of night, they are compelled
to betake themselves to an island which divides
the waters of the Hudson just above its juncture
with the Scroon, at Teohoken.

It is a strange situation for the youthful captain,
when he finds himself alone at nightfall, with that
beautiful, elfish creature, upon an island of the wilderness;
but the Indian girl, seeming to take no
thought of the peculiarity of her position, relieves
him from the embarrassment of his. She points
him to a mossy bank, where a clump of overshadowing
basswood kept off the dew; and, retiring herself
to a leafy hollow not far remote, the fatigues
they have undergone soon plunge them both in

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slumber, while the virgin moon, shining down upon
an open interval between them, is their only sentinel
through the night.

The voyagers gained the western shore with the
break of dawn, and, following it down till they had
passed the rapids, seized upon and appropriated a
canoe which they found at the mouth of a little
trouting brook which comes into the Hudson a
short distance below the forks. In this they float
down the rushing stream, which, with the Indian
girl at the helm, and Greyslaer plying his active
paddle at the prow, whirls their frail bark safely
over its rocky channel. The rapid windings of the
river and the overhanging woods, which at early
day let down only here and there a burst of sunshine
on its shadowy bosom, sweep them so quickly
from alternate light to gloom, that the startled
deer who drinks from the river's brink has scarcely
time to fix his gaze ere the shifting pageant has
passed away.

They came at last within sound of the falls of
Tiosaronda, and, landing here on the western side
of the river, near the base of Senongewoh, they
circled the northern side of the hill, and struck into
the forest in a direction towards Lake George, where
Greyslaer hoped to find a military post occupied by
his countrymen.

Hitherto our bold voyagers seemed to have been
utterly free from pursuit. But now they had not
advanced far into the forest, climbing two or three
hilly ridges in succession, before Greyslaer's steps
are arrested by a startling cry, which seems to come
almost from beneath his very feet. He looks up,
and sees The Dew with one foot advanced, her
hands averted, as if motioning him back, while she
herself gazes forward, as if trying to pierce a shadowy
glen that yawned across her path. The yell

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is again repeated from below, and the maid, cowering
toward the ground, makes signs to Greyslaer to
imitate her movements. Crouching as she commands,
he ventures, however, to approach with
stealthy caution to the place where she stands. The
Dew gently moves the tilting boughs of a stunted
hemlock which is rifted in the side of the cliff on
whose edge she hovers a sprinkling of light showers
upon the bald rock, and, as Max peers through
the leafy grating, which the hand of the maid has
partially removed, the cause of her agitation is at
once revealed to him.

A band of Mohawks were clustered around what
seemed to be the fresh track of a white man in the
forest. Greyslaer, from the intervening foliage,
could by no means distinguish the object at which
the Indians pointed, but the significant gestures of
the whole party left no doubt upon his mind that the
joyful discovery of an enemy's trail had caused the
wild yell which first startled him and his companion.
The Indians had apparently been pursuing their
way through the ravine in a direction nearly parallel
to that which he was traversing. The next moment,
and the whole band had disappeared from
beneath his eye; the Mohawks vanishing behind
the gray trees so suddenly and silently, that, as their
painted forms and tufted plumage disappear amid
the dark foliage, it seems as if some wild vision of
the forest has melted amid its glooms; and he almost
expects them to reappear the next moment by
his side from beneath the rugged bark of the huge
oaks around him; such as unfolded to release the
fabled Dryads of old.

The Dew waited until sufficient time had elapsed
for the Indians to gain several hundred yards, and
then, motioning to Greyslaer to tread carefully in
her footsteps, descended the steep bank a few paces

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and commenced moving rapidly along the hillside.
She had not proceeded far in this direction, however,
before, coming to a spot where some huge
rocks, covered only with dogbriers, let down the
light too broadly into the forest, she turned abruptly
from the path, thridded the thorny defile, and,
crossing to the opposite side of the ridge, regained
the point from which she had recently started. The
old path was then followed back for full a mile, and
then again as suddenly left as before. Four distinct
trails were thus made to branch out at intervals
from that which Greyslaer and his guide were actually
travelling; and the maid, seeming content
with these precautions, now kept the way steadily
forward; save that, ever and anon, she would pause
for a moment in some more open glade, poise herself
upon some fallen trunk, throw a keen but furtive
glance around her, and then flit lightly as a bird
from its perch into the leafy shadows beyond.

A deep swamp received them next; and no youth
less light of foot than Greyslaer could have kept up
with the forest damsel as she glided from one half-floating
tussock to another, her feet scarce touching
the black and slippery logs, which, plunged as they
were in the slimy mould, afforded yet the firmest
stepping-place around.

A windfall upon the hillside was to be traversed
next. The uprooted trees, wrenched from their
ancient seats by the tornado's force, lay with their
twisted stems, their boughs fast locked together,
their enormous roots turned vertically to the sky,
with fragments of rock and clay matted by their
fibres, and walling one side of the pit from which
they had been upturned, while barriers of ranklygrown
briers enclosed the others. But the splintered
tree, the thorny copse, the deep pitfalls, the
palisade of gnarled roots and jagged rocks

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protruding from them, offered no obstacle to the fairy footsteps
of The Dew. The little crossbill of the mountain,
the bird that best loves the “windfall,” and
whose twinkling form and brown and gray plumage
is often the only object that enlivens these ghastly
wrecks of the forest, seemed hardly more at home
among them.

A tract of level land was gained at last. It was
a pine barren, where the tree sshot upward, a hundred
feet or more, with not a leaf of underwood
around their stems, with not a shrub below them,
and scarcely a green bough appearing to break the
monotonous range of columns, save those which
formed the verdant roof which shut in this solemn
temple. The brown maid here told her white companion
to take the lead. She pointed through an almost
straight vista between the interminable trunks;
and Greyslaer, seeing his way before him, stepped
fleetly forward, his companion treading cautiously
in his footsteps upon the yielding sand.

They had nearly crossed these dangerously open
glades, when Greyslaer suddenly felt a light hand
upon his shoulder; he turned and saw the girl pointing,
with an agitated look, to an object that was advancing
toward them nearly in the direct line they
were travelling. It was an Indian just emerging
from the thickets of ash and maple that grew upon
the edge of the barren. A few moments more, and
they would have gained the same leafy covert.

The girl in an instant knew the man for a Mohawk.
She waited not to see whether he was followed
by others. It might be one of the same
band she had seen a few hours before upon the trail
of the white hunter; and, if so, all her efforts to
avoid them had but involved her friend in their toils.
But whether it were the same or another party of
her tribesmen, it mattered not; the life of

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Greyslaer now depended more than ever upon her faithful
and sagacious guidance. The Indian paused
and looked backward, as if awaiting the coming up
of his party. The Dew seized the moment, and,
followed by Greyslaer, sped backward on her path.
She crossed and recrossed it repeatedly, Greyslaer
now in his turn stepping lightly and carefully in her
footprints, so as to cover, yet not wholly erase them,
while their way yet lay through the sands of the
pine barren.

They gained at last the thick greenwood, where
the deciduous trees imbowered their path, and the
elastic carpet of moss and wild flowers, and spongy
trunks o'ergrown with juniper, and tangled thickets
of mosswood and wytch-hopple, gave now the
springy footing the tired hunter loves, and now afforded
the deep covert where the hounded deer
will seek to hide.

Proceeding thus in a westward direction, the fugitives
soon found themselves again within sight of
the river, and near the very place where they had
landed in the morning. The current ran swiftly,
but they did not hesitate to ford it, and clamber a
mountainous ridge opposite. They paused upon
a lofty ledge of rock to look back, and saw their
pursuers already in the stream. They crossed the
ridge, and descended to the other side. They gained
the banks of another river not larger than the
first, but hesitated to cross; for the yell of the Indians
was echoed from the rocks above them, and
they feared to be seen while making the passage.
Whither shall they now fly? They turn and follow
down the stream, though it leads them nearly in
the direction from which the pursuit is coming; but
their only hope is in doubling thus upon their tracks.
They make the point where the two branches meet
and mingle their waters. They turn to leave the

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stream they have been following, and clamber up
the sides of the glen through which it flows, and
find themselves upon a narrow isthmus, with another
stream, deeper and far more violent, roaring
around its rocky base. Greyslaer approached the
verge of the precipice, and despaired of proceeding
farther. The cliff opposite was steep as that
whereon they stood. The main stream, whose tributary
it seemed he had been last traversing, had
here cloven its way through a rocky ridge in a channel
so narrow that any of the trees around him
would span the black chasm. But he had no axe
to fell one, nor would he have dared to disturb the
echoes of the forest if one were at hand.

At this moment the shrill whoop of the Mohawks
rose fearfully behind him. They were near. He
spoke a few words to his companion, seized a pendant
vine that flourished near the spot, and flung
himself out from the face of the cliff, as if determined
to drop into the roaring current, and take his
chance for escape in its angry bosom. He cast one
glance back on the maid ere he let himself drop in
the tide below. She had not sprung forward to prevent
him, but stood with folded arms and a look of
indignant sorrow upon her brow. Was it mingled
scorn and pity that he should thus desert his preserver?
So thought Greyslaer, as, still holding his
grasp on the vine, he permitted himself to swing
back by her side. “Surely you can swim, and do
not shrink from trying that stream with me,” he
cried.

“Were my brother an otter, he could not live in
that terrible water,” replied the maiden.

The whoop was again pealed nearer and more
near; it rose, too, this time, from a dozen savage
voices. The girl wrung her hands as if in despair,
while Greyslaer folded his arms and leaned against

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a tree, as if moodily resigned to his fate. Suddenly,
however, the thought of a new device inspires The
Dew. She clambers like a squirrel toward the tree-top
from which the vine depends; loosing a long
and vigorous tendril from the stem as she ascends,
she quickly passes another and a smaller one round
it, so as to attach it firmly to a projecting bough;
descends a few yards, and, grasping the vine tightly
in her hands, darts out from the wall of foliage like
a swallow from the face of a cliff, clears the chasm,
and lands safely upon a dizzy ledge opposite.

Greyslaer, who, unappalled for himself, had but
a few moments before hung suspended over the gulf
below, covers his face with his hands in the instant
the daring feat is in the act of being accomplished;
and, almost ere he can look again, the maid has recrossed
the chasm and dropped nimbly by his side.
But why do they still delay? The sound of pursuit
grows nigher, yet Max refuses to take the chance
of escape, of which his noble guide has so daringly
set him the example, until she herself is in a place
of safety. The breath of an instant is precious—
and now The Dew again makes the airy passage, and
is followed by her friend the instant he can recover
the vine as it swings back within his reach. The
Dew, with Indian precaution, seizes it once more
as he is thoughtlessly about releasing it from his
grasp, and, winding the end around a heavy stone,
she hands it to Max, and signifies to him to throw
it into a thicket upon the same side of the stream
whereon it grew. The two have then barely time
to plunge into the bushes beyond them, when the
pursuing Mohawks appear upon the headland opposite,
and they soon after hear their baffled howl of
disappointment at the broken and lost trail of the
fugitives.

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