Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 1).djvu/103

 man who fully comprehended, while he did not fear to face the danger, served to remind Heyward of the importance of the charge with which he himself had been in trusted. Glancing his eyes around, with a vain effort to pierce the gloom that was thickening beneath the leafy arches of the forest, he felt as if cut off from all human aid, his unresisting companions would soon lay at the entire mercy of their barbarous enemies, who, like beasts of prey, only waited till the gathering darkness might render their blows more fatally certain. His awakened imagination, deluded by the deceptive light, converted each waving bush, or the fragment of some fallen tree, into human forms, and twenty times he fancied he could distinguish the horrid visages of his lurking foes, peering from their hiding places, in never-ceasing watchfulness of the movements of his party. Looking upward, he found that the thin fleecy clouds, which evening had painted on the blue sky, were already losing their faintest tints of rose-colour, while the imbedded stream which glided past the spot