Chapter 37

"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove."
--Lay of the Last Minstrel.
"IT would have been sad, indeed, to lose you in such manner, my old friend," said Oliver, catching his breath for utterance. "Up and away! even now we may be too late; the flames are circling round the point of the rock below, and, unless we can pass there, our only chance must be over the precipice. Away! away! shake off your apathy, John; now is the time of need."

Mohegan pointed toward Elizabeth, who, forgetting her danger, had sunk back to a projection of the rock as soon as she recognized the sounds of Edwards' voice, and said with something like awakened animation:

"Save her--leave John to die."

"Her! whom mean you?" cried the youth, turning quickly to the place the other indicated; but when he saw the figure of Elizabeth bending toward him in an attitude that powerfully spoke terror, blended with reluctance to meet him in such a place, the shock deprived him of speech.

"Miss Temple!" he cried, when he found words; " you here! is such a death reserved for you!"

"No, no, no--no death, I hope, for any of us, Mr. Edwards," she replied, endeavoring to speak calmly; there is smoke, but no fire to harm us. Let us endeavor to retire."

"Take my arm," said Edwards; "there must he an opening in some direction for your retreat. Are you equal to the effort?"

"Certainly. You surely magnify the danger, Mr. Ed wards. Lead me out the way you came."

"I will--I will," cried the youth, with a kind of hysterical utterance. "No, no--there is no danger--I have alarmed you unnecessarily."

"But shall we leave the Indian--can we leave him, as be says, to die?"

An expression of painful emotion crossed the face of the young man; he stopped and cast a longing look at Mohegan but, dragging his companion after him, even against her will, he pursued his way with enormous strides toward the pass by which he had just entered the circle of flame.

"Do not regard him, " he said, in those tones that de note a desperate calmness; "he is used to the woods, and such scenes; and he will escape up the mountain--over the rock--or he can remain where he is in safety."

"You thought not so this moment, Edwards! Do not leave him there to meet with such a death," cried Elizabeth, fixing a look on the countenance of her conductor that seemed to distrust his sanity.

"An Indian born! who ever heard of an Indian dying by fire? An Indian cannot burn; the idea is ridiculous. Hasten, hasten, Miss Temple, or the smoke may incommodate you."

"Edwards! your look, your eye, terrifies me! Tell me the danger; is it greater than it seems? I am equal to any trial."

"If we reach the point of yon rock before that sheet of fire, we are safe, Miss Temple," exclaimed the young man in a voice that burst without the bounds of his forced composure. " Fly! the