Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 3).djvu/75

 "Duncan!" she exclaimed, in a voice that seemed to tremble at the sounds created by itself.

"Alice!" he answered, leaping carelessly among trunks, boxes, arms, and furniture, until he stood at her side.

"I knew, Duncan, that you would never desert me," she said, looking up with a momentary glow of pleasure beaming on her otherwise dejected countenance. "But you are alone! grateful as it is to be thus remembered, I could wish to think you are not entirely alone!"

Duncan, observing that she trembled in a manner which betrayed an inability to continue standing, gently induced her to be seated, while he recounted those leading incidents which it has been our task to record. Alice listened with breathless interest; and though the young man touched lightly on the sorrows of the stricken father, taking care, however, not to wound the self-love of his auditor, the tears ran as freely down the cheeks of the daughter, as though she had never wept before. The soothing tenderness of Duncan, however,