. 67-72.
 
Leaving the unsuspecting Heyward, and his confiding companions, to penetrate
still deeper into a forest that contained such treacherous inmates, we must use
an author's privilege, and shift the scene a few miles to the westward of the
place where we have last seen them.
    On that day, two men were lingering on the banks of a small but rapid
stream, within an hour's journey of the encampment of Webb, like those who
awaited the appearance of an absent person, or the approach of some expected
event. The vast canopy of woods spread itself to the margin of the river,
overhanging the water, and shadowing its dark current with a deeper hue. The
rays of the sun were beginning to grow less fierce, and the intense heat of the
day was lessened, as the cooler vapours of the springs and fountains rose above
their leafy beds, and rested in the atmosphere. Still that breathing silence,
which marks the drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July, pervaded the
secluded spot, interrupted, only, by the low voices of the men, the occasional
and lazy tap of a wood-pecker, the discordant cry of some gaudy jay, or a
swelling on the ear, from the dull roar of a distant water-fall.
    These feeble and broken sounds were, however, too familiar to the foresters,
to draw their attention from the more interesting matter of their dialogue.
While one of these loiterers showed the red skin and wild accoutrements of a
native of the woods, the other exhibited, through the mask of his rude and
nearly savage equipments, the brighter, though sun-burnt and long-faded
complexion of one who might claim descent from a European parentage. The former
was seated on the end of a mossy log, in a posture that permitted him to
heighten the effect of his earnest language, by the calm but expressive gestures
of an Indian, engaged in debate. His body, which was nearly naked, presented a
terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled colours of white and black. His
closely shaved head, on which no other hair than the well known and chivalrous
scalping tuft5 was preserved, was without ornament of any kind, with the
exception of a solitary eagle's plume, that crossed his crown, and depended over
the left shoulder. A tomahawk and scalping-knife, of English manufacture, were
in his girdle; while a short military rifle, of that sort with which the policy
of the whites armed their savage allies, lay carelessly across his bare and
sinewy knee. The expanded chest, full
