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For sole reply, the young girl took her friend's hand, and raising the stranger from the ground, they carried him to the hollow tree, and laid him down upon his mossy couch. "When the earth is covered with darkness," said Canondah, bending over him, "Canondah will visit her brother, and pour balsam into his wounds."
During their absence, Canondah, at the entreaty of Rosa, between whom and the young Englishman a kindness has grown up during the convalescence of the latter, and who fears for his life should Tokeah discover him, disguises the midshipman in Indian paint and apparel, supplies him with arms, and explains to him the road to New Orleans, which he trusts to find occupied by British troops.
"Canondah!" she exclaimed, in a tone of bitter reproach, as her friend pointed to an enormous alligator that lay beating the mud with its tail in the agonies of death. "Why do you do these things? Must Rosa lose her sister, because she foolishly wishes to be a man, and to fight the water-snake?"
She spoke these words with as much confidence and decision as if she had herself accompanied the stranger on his adventurous voyage. "And will Canondah," said Rosa, "leave her brother to perish of fever in the cold night air he who never harmed her or hers?"
His people will hang the chief of the Salt Lake by the neck to a tree. See, father, thy daughter delivered him from the jaws of the great water-snake, and he was already nearly dead. He has returned to his brothers, to lift the hatchet against your foes. He is no spy; his hands are soft and he was weak." "Has Canondah more lies to tell her father?" said the old man, in a milder tone.
Canondah is only a weak girl, but she could teach the young white man to strike the water-snake." As she spoke the last words, she glanced in the direction of a cypress-tree which sprang out of the shallow water at a few paces from the bank. "The young white man?" said Rosa enquiringly.
These preparations completed, they returned to the wounded man. Canondah passed her left arm under his legs, and signed to Rosa to grasp her hand, whilst their arms should serve as a support to his back. Rosa blushed and hesitated. "Does the white Rose," said Canondah, "fear to touch her brother, for whose life she was lately so anxious?"
Gradually, however, the generous rivalry and self-devotion of the two beautiful beings before him produced its effect on his savage nature. The expression of his features softened. "Go," said he with bitter scorn; "does Canondah think the Miko a fool, and that his eyes do not see who brought the white spy into the wigwam?
"Sad is the path of an Oconee maiden," said Canondah, after a long pause, during which she had filled her basket with the grapes. "Whilst the warriors are absent at the hunting grounds, we sigh away our days in the wigwam, or labour wearily in the fields. Would that Canondah were a man!" "And El Sol?" lisped Rosa with a melancholy smile. "Canondah should not complain."
It was the foot of Canondah that opened the path, but the treacherous tongue of the White Rose prevailed with her to do it." "Will my father," said Canondah, folding her hands humbly on her breast "will my father loosen the tongue of his daughter?" A long pause ensued, during which anger and paternal feeling held a visible contest in the bosom of the deeply-moved chief.
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