Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 1).djvu/58

 suspiciously on their guide, who continued his steady pace in undisturbed gravity. The young man smiled contemptuously to himself, as he believed he had mistaken some shining berry of the woods for the glistening eye-balls of a prowling savage; and he rode forward, continuing the conversation, which had been thus interrupted by the passing thought.

Major Heyward was mistaken only in suffering his youthful and generous pride to suppress for a single moment his active watchfulness. The cavalcade had not long passed, before the branches of the bushes that formed the thicket were cautiously moved asunder, and a human visage, as fiercely wild as savage art and unbridled passions could make it, peered out on the retiring footsteps of the travellers. A gleam of exultation shot across the darkly painted lineaments of the inhabitant of the forest, as he traced the route of his intended victims, who rode unconsciously onward; the light and graceful forms of the females, waving among the trees in the curvatures of their path, followed at each bend by the