Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans Author:James Fenimore Cooper Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Major Heyward was mistaken only in suffering his youthful and generous pride to suppress his active watchfulness. The cavalcade had not long passed, before the b... more »ranches 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 manly figure of Heyward, until, finally, the shapeless person of the singing master was concealed behind the numberless trunks of trees, that rose, in dark lines, in the intermediate space. CHAPTER III. Before these fields were shorn ant! till'd. Full to the brim our rivers flow'd . The melody of waters fill'd The fresh and boundless wood ; And torrents dash'd, and rivulets play'd. And fountains spouted in the shade. Bryant. Leaving the unsuspecting Heyward and his confiding com panions to penetrate still deeper into a forest that contained such treacherous inmates, we must use an authors privilege, and shift the scene a few miles to the westward of the place where we have last seen them. On that day, two men were lingering on the banks of a small but rapid stream, within an hour's journey of the encampment of Webb, like those who awaited the appearance of an absent person, or the approach of some expected event. The vast canopy of woods spread itself to the margin of the river, overhanging the water, and shadowing its dark currentwith a deeper hue. The rays of the sun were begi...« less