CHAPTER VIII.
"Oh, come and hear what cruel wrongs Befel the Dark Ladye."-- COLERIDGE.
THE Mohawk girl was in high spirits at the coming of the wild fowl to the lake; she would clap her hands and laugh with almost childish glee as she looked at them darkening the lake like clouds resting on its surface.
"If I had but my father's gun, his good old gun, now!" would Hector say, as he eyed the timorous flocks as they rose and fell upon the lake; "but these foolish birds are so shy, that they are away before an arrow can reach them." Indiana smiled in her quiet way; she was busy filling the canoe with green boughs, which she arranged so as completely to transform the little vessel into the semblance of a floating island of evergreen; within this bower she motioned Hector to crouch down, leaving a small space for the free use of his bow, while concealed at the prow she gently and noiselessly paddled the canoe from the shore among the rice-beds, letting it remain stationary or merely rocking to and fro with the undulatory motion of the waters.

The unsuspecting birds, deceived into full security, eagerly pursued their pastime or their prey, and it was no difficult matter for the hidden archer to hit many a black duck or teal or whistlewing, as it floated securely on the placid water, or rose to shift its place a few yards up or down the stream.
Soon the lake around was strewed with the feathered game, which Wolfe, cheered on by Lewis, who was stationed on the shore, brought to land.
Indiana told Hector that this was the season when the Indians made great gatherings on the lake for duck-shooting, which they pursued much after the same fashion as that which has been described, only instead of one, a dozen or more canoes would be thus disguised with boughs, with others stationed at different parts of the lake, or under the shelter of the island, to collect the birds.

This sport was generally finished by a great feast.
The Indians offered the first of the birds as an oblation to the Great Spirit, as a grateful acknowledgment of his bounty in having allowed them to gather food thus plentifully for their families; sometimes distant tribes with whom they were on terms of friendship were invited to share the sport and partake of the spoils.

Indiana could not understand why Hector did not follow the custom of her Indian fathers, and offer the first duck or the best fish to propitiate the Great Spirit.

Hector told her that the God he worshipped desired no sacrifice; that his holy Son, when he came down from heaven and gave himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, had satisfied his Father, the Great Spirit, an hundred-fold.
They feasted now continually upon the waterfowl, and Catharine learned from Indiana how to skin them, and so preserve the feathers for making tippets, and bonnets, and ornamental trimmings, which are not only warm, but light and very becoming.