Beadle's Dime Novels No. 142: The Sagamore of Saco — page 112: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

_< “. b Sa. aa ~~ 46 THE SILENT HUNTER. a single leaf of her book, and who had been watching every mo- .tion and look of the man who called himseif her father, also lit a candle and went to bed. Her room was beside that of the ped- dier, but on a level with the kitchen. “Now, Martha,” said Ralph n, in a low, hushed voice, hissed forth from between his teeth, ‘‘that peddler’s box is full of dollars and watches. He must sleep in the pool.” ‘*No more murter,’’ replied the woman, sinking into a chair, and hiding him from her with her hands. Eat a the girl may be listen- - And Ralph rose, crawled across the room, but stopped as he heard Kate singing merrily at her win- dow. CHAPTER VII. THE INDIAN VILLAGE. Wuewn Custaloga left his com- panion in that wild gully of the woods, he began his journey with all that caution and circumspec- tion for which his race have so long been widely eelebrated. His ear drank in every sound, he trod the woods with the lightness of a fawn, his feet scarcely stirred the leaves and twigs which covered the ground, and his arms were so held as to avoid all chance of con- wet smog the ee Ss ; re was some singularly solemn in the aspect of the forest thro which the red-man glided no ly, stealthily, as a snake does the tall prairie or the th under-brush. For crossed — —r re) rtu and piun e totheforessitself, It nowt way. All was darkness, . ! and night There was not talking his women scol of d over & ae th pak ape J to tell that nature was not dead. Not an owl hooted, not a wild beast was heard to roar; and the gentle sighing of trees in the light air that prevailed, was all that told that nature still lived and ruied creation. But Custaloga moved along with the unerring instinct of a woodman, one of the tirst features of whose woodcraft was to tind his way where no man else could gales himself. When one has ecome in some degree accustom- ed to the forest and the prairie, it is singular with what ease he pene- trates in a direct line through wilds where there seems no guide. But the moss on the trees, the pebbles in the path, the color of the bark, the twinkling of a star, the point of arock, are indications to the hunter as sure as sign-post orroad. As, however, Custaloga proceeded, he slackened his pace until at last he paused, looked round, and then seated himself at the foot ofa tree. Hewas now on the summit of a = slope, very thickly wooded, but with scarcely any undergrowth of bushes. ustaloga had rested himself for about five minutes, and had in that time gained breath and consid- ered the course now to be adopted. He began —*, his rifle behind a tree, whence he could casily snatch it, but where, from several trunks being together, no one could very easily see it in joys a He then lay flat on his face, h ear to the ground. The change from the stillness of night in that poner thicket to what he now eard, was very singular and strik- ing. Heseemed quite surrounded by busy life, by some phantasma- orial life, through which he could earmurmurinug, whispering, buzz- ing, but which he could not see. e gentle wind which prevailed came up the slope, and brought. with it sounds of warriors gravely hing, of Ww ; 6 - festations, in fact, of Indian life, cComichooksscom, - . a