Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/98

84 burden. But its gratified possessor seemed not to mind its weight and even looked back  regretfully at its companion left behind.

It was he who led the way. David went next, and at the rear came the Indian with  the musket. For more than a mile they kept to the swamp land and woods, following first  the dried bed of a runnel and later the foot  of a long hill whose wooded summit stood  dark against the yellow of the western sky. No word was spoken and scarcely a twig was snapped or a branch flicked by the savages. Had David’s plight been less unhappy, he might have enjoyed seeing with what ease  and in what stealthy silence the leader made  his cautious way through the underbrush. Branches parted and swept together again without a sound, and even the bucket swinging at his hip never once caught. The pace was not fast, but it never faltered, and to  David, who had not the use of his arms to  aid him, it was more rapid than he would  have chosen. Once, catching a foot in a vine, he fell headlong, with much noise, unable  to save himself, and was jerked rudely to his  feet again by the Indian behind him, who  growled at him in Nipmuck words he did not  understand, but whose tenor was clear