FRANK LEE did not ride many miles further, before he met the return party of ladies. Kate was riding on ahead of the now melancholy little cortege, weeping quite bitterly, and her eyes were so blinded, and her thoughts so absorbed, that she did not perceive the horsemen approaching, until Frank reined up right along side of her.
By this time they had arrived at the head of a small stream, where Joe said the deer were in the habit of drinking, the water being a little brackish, of which they are very fond. He slung the fine animal, whose throat he had just cut, across his pony, and after securing it with thongs, and reloading his piece, procceded by the side of Lee, talking all the while. He told him that more of the ruffle shirt gentry, as he loved to call them, would unsling their arms, before they had proceeded many days into the wilderness. Frank observed that Joe's attention was earnestly directed to each side of the path on which they were travelling, notwithstanding his constant stream of talk, and stopping every minute to blaze a tree. He saw that Jarvis stooped down and examined the bushes attentively every now and then, and when they came to the ford of the little stream upon whose banks they had been some travelling, Joe laid his hand upon the other's bridle rein, and then stooped down, and most attentively scanned some tracks of horses' hoofs, left in the soft mud of the opposite bank, and then carefully counted them. Frank asked him what was the meaning of all this, and if he had fallen upon the Indian trail?