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Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851

"Oak Openings"


Once, and once only, during their slow passage up the Kalamazoo, did
the bee-hunter observe something about Peter to awaken his original
apprehensions. The fourth day after leaving the mouth of the river,
and when the whole party were resting after the toil of passing a
"carrying-place," our hero had observed the eyes of that tribeless
savage roaming from one white face to another, with an expression in
them so very fiendish, as actually to cause his heart to beat
quicker than common. The look was such a one as le Bourdon could not
remember to have ever before beheld in a human countenance. In point
of fact, he had seen Peter in one of those moments when the pent
fires of the volcano, that ceaselessly raged within his bosom, were
becoming difficult to suppress; and when memory was busiest in
recalling to his imagination scenes of oppression and wrong, that
the white man is only too apt to forget amid the ease of his
civilization, and the security of his power. But the look, and the
impression produced by it on le Bourdon, soon passed away, and were
forgotten by him to whom it might otherwise have proved to be a most
useful warning.


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