334 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



So much was she absorbed, that she never appeared to 

 notice the fact that we had heard nothing from my friend, 

 the planter, and that still our stores of provisions, wood and 

 water, did not appear to diminish in the least, and that I had 

 only to hobble to the door to bring them in each morning. 

 She asked no questions, and saw nothing but what was required 

 for her husband. 



My life now grew horribly monotonous. The eternal silence, 

 broken only by an occasional word to me, which had sole 

 reference to some one of the details of our material wants ; 

 that dumb worker, so earnestly plying his curious and delicate 

 labors ; that stern, and almost sleepless watcher, whose eyes 

 were always upon him, and who scarcely seemed to be aware of 

 my presence ; that noiseless guardianship over our necessities 

 from without ; all taken together, had such an effect upon 

 my imagination, that sometimes I really believed myself to be 

 in a dream, and that the whole of these surroundings were 

 unreal as drifting phantasmagoria through the skies of cloud- 

 land. 



I had noticed for some days past that the eyes of the woman 

 shone with an unusual brightness, and that to all my questions 

 with regard to her wound she gave either evasive or abrupt 

 answers. The ball had not yet been extracted, to my knowl- 

 edge, though I had good reason to believe that this stern 

 being had attempted to cut it out herself in private. In 

 so deep a wound there would be, of course, a severe and 

 dangerous sloughing. She had given me no sort of oppor- 

 tunity to judge how far it had progressed, for, like a wounded 

 panther, she went sullenly apart to live or die alone at the 

 feet of her mate. 



I was inexpressibly shocked to notice these dreary symp- 

 toms, and isolated and unsympathetic as our relations were, 

 and had been, I wept like a child when I saw her at last 

 fall upon the bed her husband had so lately occupied, and 

 with the first expression of utter helplessness I had yet heard 



