We must die; yes—yes—we must die—it is the will of God, and let us endeavor to submit like his own children.”
“Die!” the youth rather shrieked than exclaimed, “no—no—no—there must yet be hope—you, at least, must-not, shall not die.”
“In what way can we escape?” asked Elizabeth, pointing with a look of heavenly composure toward the fire
“Observe! the flame is crossing the barrier of wet ground—it comes slowly, Edwards, but surely.
Ah! see! the tree! the tree is already lighted!”
Her words were too true.
The heat of the conflagration had at length overcome the resistance of the spring, and the fire was slowly stealing along the half-dried moss; while a dead pine kindled with the touch of a forked flame, that, for a moment, wreathed around the stem of the tree, as it whined, in one of its evolutions, under the influence of the air.
The effect was instantaneous, The flames danced along the parched trunk of the pine like lightning quivering on a chain, and immediately a column of living fire was raging on the terrace.
It soon spread from tree to tree, and the scene was evidently drawing to a close.
The log on which Mohegan was seated lighted at its further end, and the Indian appeared to be surrounded by fire.
Still he was unmoved.
As his body was unprotected, his sufferings must have been great; but his fortitude was superior to all.
His voice could yet be heard even in the midst of these horrors.
Elizabeth turned her head from the sight, and faced the valley Furious eddies of wind were created by the heat, and, just at the moment, the canopy of fiery smoke that overhung the valley was cleared away, leaving a distinct view of the peaceful village beneath them.
“My father!——my father!” shrieked Elizabeth
“Oh! this—surely might have been spared me—but I submit.”
The distance was not so great but the figure of Judge Temple could be seen, standing in his own grounds, and apparently contemplating, in perfect unconsciousness of the danger of his child, the mountain in flames.
This sight was still more painful than the approaching danger; and Elizabeth again faced the hill.
“My intemperate warmth has done this!” cried Edwards, in the accents of despair.
“If I had possessed but a moiety of your heavenly resignation, Miss Temple, all might yet have been well.”
“Name it not—name it not,” she said.
“It is now of no avail.
We must die, Edwards, we must die—let us do so as Christians.
But—no—you may yet escape, perhaps.
Your dress is not so fatal as mine.
Fly! Leave me, An opening may yet be found for you, possibly—certainly it is worth the effort.
Fly! leave me—but stay!
You will see my father! my poor, my bereaved father!
Say to him, then, Edwards, say to him, all that can appease his anguish. Tell him that I died happy and collected; that I have gone to my beloved mother; that the hours of this life are nothing when balanced in the scales of eternity.
Say how we shall meet again.
And say,” she continued, dropping her voice, that had risen with her feelings, as if conscious of her worldly weakness, “how clear, how very dear, was my love for him; that it was near, too near, to my love for God.”
The youth listened to her touching accents, but moved not.
In a moment he found utterance, and replied:
“And is it me that you command to leave you! to leave you on the edge of the grave?
Oh! Miss Temple, how little have you known me!” he cried, dropping on his knees at her feet, and gathering her flowing robe in his arms as if to shield her from the flames.
“I have been driven to the woods in despair, but your society has tamed the lion within me.
If I have wasted my time in degradation, ‘twas you that charmed me to it.
If I have forgotten my name and family, your form supplied the place of memory.
If I have forgotten my wrongs, ‘twas you that taught me charity.
No—no—dearest Elizabeth, I may die with you, but I can never leave you!”
Elizabeth moved not, nor answered.
It was plain that her thoughts had been raised from the earth, The recollection of her father, and her regrets at their separation, had been mellowed by a holy sentiment, that lifted her above the level of earthly things, and she was fast losing the weakness of her sex in the near view of eternity.
But as she listened to these words she became once more woman.
She struggled against these feelings, and smiled, as she thought she was shaking off the last lingering feeling of nature, when the world, and all its seductions, rushed again to her heart, with the sounds of a human, voice, crying in piercing tones:
“Gal! where be ye, gal! gladden the heart of an old man, if ye yet belong to ‘arth!”
“Hist!” said Elizabeth; “‘tis the Leather-Stocking; he seeks me!”
“‘Tis Natty!” shouted Edwards, “and we may yet be saved!”
A wide and circling flame glared on their eyes for a moment, even above the fire of the woods, and a loud report followed.
“‘Tis the canister, ‘tis the powder,” cried the same voice, evidently approaching them. “‘Tis the canister, and the precious child is lost.”
At the next instant Natty rushed through the steams of the spring, and appeared on the terrace, without his deerskin cap, his hair burnt to his head, his shirt, of country check, black and filled with holes, and his red features of a deeper color than ever, by the heat he had encountered.