 for the purpose, and Judith Hutter had merely pushed aside the
leaves that lay before a window, in order to show her face, and speak to them.
 

                                   Chapter IV

 »And that timid fawn starts not with fear
 When I steal to her secret bower,
 And that young May violet to me is dear,
 And I visit the silent streamlet near,
 To look on the lovely flower.«
                                           Bryant, »An Indian Story,« ll. 11-15.
 
The Ark, as the floating habitation of the Hutters was generally called, was a
very simple contrivance. A large flat, or scow, composed the buoyant part of the
vessel, and, in its centre, occupying the whole of its breadth and about two
thirds of its length, stood a low fabric, resembling the castle in construction,
though made of materials so light as barely to be bulletproof. As the sides of
the scow were a little higher than usual, and the interior of the cabin had no
more elevation than was necessary for comfort, this unusual addition had neither
a very clumsy, nor a very obtrusive appearance. It was, in short, little more
than a modern canal boat, though more rudely constructed, of greater breadth
than common, and bearing about it the signs of the wilderness, in its
bark-covered posts and roof. The scow, however, had been put together with some
skill, being comparatively light, for its strength, and sufficiently manageable.
The cabin was divided into two apartments, one of which served for a parlor, and
the sleeping-room of the father, and the other was appropriated to the uses of
the daughters. A very simple arrangement sufficed for the kitchen, which was in
one end of the scow, and removed from the cabin, standing in the open air; the
Ark being altogether a summer habitation.
    The and-bush, as Hurry in his ignorance of English termed it, is quite as
easily explained. In many parts of the lake and river, where the banks were
steep and high, the smaller trees, and larger bushes, as has been already
mentioned, fairly overhung the stream, their branches not unfrequently dipping
into the water. In some instances they grew out in nearly horizontal lines, for
thirty or forty feet. The water being uniformly deepest near the shores, where
the banks were highest and the nearest to a perpendicular, Hutter had found no
difficulty in letting the Ark drop under one of these covers, where it had been
anchored with a view to conceal its position, security requiring some such
precautions, in his view of the
