"Water, still water, forever water," she murmured. Suddenly turning round, she darted away into the recesses of the cave, leaping and flying, as it were, with her long hair tossed to and fro about her person. Presently she emerged, followed by a pet panther, which leaped and bounded in concert with his mistress. Seizing a bow, she sent the arrow away into the black roof of the cavern, waited for its return, and then discharged it again and again, watching its progress with eager and impatient delight. This done, she cast herself again upon the skins, spread her long hair over her form, and lay motionless as marble.
Ascáshe again called, "Why do you not come and eat, Skoke?"
Having no answer, she called out, "Wa-ain, come and eat;" and then tired of this useless teasing, she arose, and shaking the white girl by the arm, cried, "Bridget Vines, I bid you eat."
"I will, Ascáshe," answered the other, taking corn and dried fish, which the other presented.
"The spider caught a bad snake when she wove a net for Bridget Vines," muttered the tall woman. The other covered her face with her hands, and the veins of her forehead swelled above her fingers; yet when she uncovered her eyes they were red, not with tears, but the effort to suppress their flow.
"It is a long, long time, that I have been here, Ascáshe," answered Bridget, sorrowfully.
"Have you never been out since Samoret left you here?" asked the net-weaver; and she fixed her eyes searchingly upon the face of the girl, who never quailed nor changed color beneath her gaze, but replied in the same tone, "How should little Hope escape--where should she go?" Hope being the name by which Mistress Vines had called her child in moments of tenderness, as suggesting a mother's yearning hope that she would at some time be less capricious, for Bridget had always been a wayward, incoherent, and diminutive creature, and treated with great gentleness by the family.
"Do you remember what I once told you?" continued the other. "You had a friend--you have an enemy."
This time Bridget Vines started, and gave utterance to a long, low, plaintive cry, as if her soul wailed, as it flitted from its frail tenement, for she fell back as if dead upon the skins.