ALTHOUGH that crash and cry were well calculated to spread alarm among those who were gathered in the cabin, still no one, but Rude Keller, exhibited any signs of surprise or fear. For my own part, I instantly comprehended all that before had filled me with vague suspicions at the movements of old Mike, and the absence of Benny Brown. The truth was to me as rapid in its coming, as was the suddenness of the sweeping crash, the fearful cry, and the wild yell that had sounded simultaneously outside of the cabin-door. And Rude Keller understood it too, but he understood it through the medium of what he knew to be its intention and its consequences, and I was not surprised to see him continue rigidly fixed in the same attitude of terror in which I have painted him in the preceding chapter.

Being the nearest to the door, I could more easily than the rest distinguish all the sounds that had been heard, and could separate the triumphant yell that had rung so fearfully distinct from the rest. It was the Indian's yell, and in it there was something so exultant, so wild and savage, that I could not misunderstand it, and it must have struck upon the ear of Rude Keller with an effect terribly distinct. Mike's expression, They are swept clean off,' had no ring of the true Christian metal in it, and old barbaric Africa rose triumphant over the redeemed son of the old exile, and his dark suggestion well echoed the fierce and vindictive cry of his pagan brother. Sometimes the Christian's low-breathed words are as terrible as the loud-bellowed curse of the savage. But Mike could be sorry for his expression of vengeance, while Benny Brown could never be. Repentance is the creed of the one -the cause of the repentance is the religion of the other. Where was Mike's book then ?

Mike sat calmly by the hearth, while the broken limbs of the tree might at that moment be crunching among the broken limbs of men ; and I, too, was standing there, while probably within a few feet of me lay bodies like my own, crushed and mangled, suffering, and perhaps dead. The priest and I at least must be Christians, and do the Christian's part. There was only a bolt between me and my duty, and it was not many seconds before I had withdrawn that bolt, and, followed by the priest, I stepped over the door-way.

A confused mass stopped our progress. The twilight had deepened into gloom, leaving only a blood-red streak on the horizon of the western hills, like a flag held out by shipwrecked mariners, as they rise and fall on the long blue billows of the sea. All on the earth was wrapped in a garment of gossamer obscure, so that objects lay around indistinct and

mystic, though we knew them to be things familiar to us, as broken toys in our nursery-room, when only the dying embers in the grate shine on them, changing the younger brother's little hobby-horse into a phantom of that steed bestrode by Death, as spoken of in the Apocalypse.' Before us, immediately at our feet, was a mass of shattered branches, and the stout body of the parent tree, stretched like the body of a serpent, who had fallen among the arrows of his foes, and in falling had crushed and scattered them around him.

Strange to say, there was no groan, no movement, nothing to indicate aught of human animation and no object on the instant, as I fully feared, met our view, to tell that the Indian and the negro's stratagem had ended fatally for their enemies. Where were Rude Keller's companions, upon whom the lashing branches of the withered oak had been loosened? Where the Indian himself?

Pushing through the matted obstacles of twig and limb, I broke my way into the open space; but before doing so, I begged the priest to remain in the cabin, and see that Rude Keller was not allowed to leave it.

There was scarcely any necessity for that, though at the time I was of course unaware of those events that were transpiring within.

I had no sooner reached the open ground where Sampson and I had waited until Mike should reäppear from the clump, whither, as it now turned out, he had gone to saw through the body of the oak, a thing long ago agreed upon between him and the Indian, in anticipation of some such juncture as that which had occurred, when seated quietly upon the ground, I found Benny, with his head supported by his hands, and his elbows supported by his knees, as still and mysterious as an Egyptian sphinx; and in the full association of the scene, in the silence, in the dusky humanity before me, there was enough to conjure to my mind the idea of the similitude. But my sphinx must speak. I approached the Indian, and leaning over, so that I could speak only loud enough for him to hear, for I supposed this was only a part of his stratagem, and that he was anxious still to play out the ways and doings of his race, I said:

'Is any one killed, Benny ?'

No answer.

'Is any one wounded, Benny?'

No answer.

'Have they fled ?

The question had its effect.

The old man rose to his feet, not like an old man in an old city, with his old habits of old indulgences, with his old limbs creaking in their rusty joints with dry old rheumatism; but he rose to his feet, like one of those fabled men of Cadmus, and he stood by me, a red old hero as he was, but not red with blood. Looking me full in the face, he pointed to the spot where the oak had so lately stretched its frame-work against the sky, and then, with a deep utterance, he half-whispered in my ear:

There is one tree less in the woods- but there are as many white men as when the sun went down. Oga-ka-nin does not kill - not

even the tree, for it was dead: the GREAT SPIRIT killed it years ago, when He was angry.'

I began to think, despite the solemn style of Oga-ka-nin, that he had indulged in a practical joke, and had meant to give his pursuers no more serious thing to remember than a rather magnificent fright. Yet I was not certain, for now that the Indian was all Indian, even to his sonorous name, I could not readily imagine that his nature had been contented with simply performing a very nicely-contrived trick of measurement, and allowing, by a complete mastery of distance, the branches of the tree to sweep only the skirts of his foes.

Then they escaped?"

Again the Indian raised his arm and pointed with a gesture to the woods, that answered my question in the affirmative.

I breathed freer, for guilty as they intended to be, they had not succeeded in the full accomplishment of their purpose, and having failed in that, I was satisfied; but the tiger was in the trap.

And then the savage nature of the white man, chastened somewhat by justice and education, swelled in my heart, and made me, with a thrill of animal joy, say to the Indian just the words I have italicized above, 'The tiger was in the trap ;' and the Indian's silence answered me that he had placed him there. And now I felt how unnecessary it is to make loud arrangements when great purposes are in hand; for here was this instinctive lover of vengeance, this red outlaw of nature, calm as the scene that surrounded him with its sense of peace and symbols of safety, while his deadliest foe was in the hands, so far as he had a right to know, only of an old black carpenter, with a drooping shoulder and a prayer-book in his over-coat pocket, that taught him the lessons of forgiveness; and for what I might know, under ordinary cir cumstances, at liberty to move himself away from the grasp of his enemies as easily as a hawk would break the meshes of a spider's web that hung between the twigs close by the branch on which he poised himself with his bloody talons. In silence had this Indian worked, and now in silence was he certain that his work was good. So fully was I impressed with the consistency of every movement that I had seen of all these events so hurriedly grouped together, that I leant with perfect reliance upon the mute power by which I was surrounded.

Was I getting to be an Indian too?

The silence of my after-years almost made me think that I was; but now that I am so regular a talker to the public, I fear me much, that I am nothing after all but a white man.

They are talking loud in the cabin, Benny: let us go in,' I said to the tranquil statue by my side.

With a low laugh, the tranquil statue answered me:

'If the wind blew in the grass, you could not hear the storm inside the wigwam: the snake that rattles, makes no noise when he bites.'

'Yes, but he makes a noise to tell that he will bite, and this talk may mean the same.'

"We know how to keep his tooth from striking- a deer can do that.'

Benny's allusion to the morning's incident, convinced me that he had been in our neighborhood, even before he had appeared to come so suddenly upon the scene. There is almost witchcraft in the woods and its people.

Having satisfied myself of all that I had left the cabin in quest of, I now determined to return and see the issue of these complications into which I had been so singularly plunged.

When I set about fulfilling my intention, I was gratified that the Indian made a similar movement, and so in silence we commenced our return. The Indian's knowledge saved me some trouble, for instead of breaking through the stiff twigs and branches, as I had done on leaving the cabin, he now led me to the extremity of the limbs, where they were more yielding, and thus with greater ease we descended to the door, which, upon attempting to open, we found closed. That was a good sign.

'Mabonoqua!' That was the Indian's signal, and it was understood The door was opened on the instant by Mike, and upon our entrance it was closed again, and the bolt shot into its place.

The scene within the cabin was somewhat changed. The priest was no longer absorbed in meditation, nor was Mike intent upon warming himself by the burning brands in the chimney-corner; and old Sampson seemed to have converted himself into a powerful young negro, with the strength of his Jewish name-sake in his muscular frame; and Rude Keller, whom we so lately saw, the very impersonification of terror, was now a sullen, grumbling, swearing bravo, caught in the toils, and surrounded by a combination of potential placidity, whose barrier he felt it impossible to break. Doubtless, to his frightened imagination, during my temporary absence, a vision had come to him of the crushed bodies of his friends, or at the best, he saw them hastening and hiding through the woods, while darkly behind each tree, stood the body of his Indian conqueror, with the poised barrel of unerring fate levelled to smite him, should he venture forth into the dusky and bewildering night.

The dog, too, had received new light, and with bristling hair ridged upon his back, stood at a safe distance and watched the tiger in the trap, and the tiger watched him as one animal watches another.

The Indian, upon his entrance, walked straight up to the priest, and offered him his hand, and the priest took it, as many a time before he had done, and many a time since, with the air of one who was born a knight and been consecrated an apostle. And then the Indian swept the apartment with his eagle eye, until it rested, like a ray of fire, upon Rude Keller.

Rude felt the buring coal, and turned away from its heat, and lapping out his tongue, convulsively licked his grizzled chops, and clenched his fingers, as if he was trying to loosen the rivets of a chain that stopped the circulation of his blood. No one spoke a word, until I advanced to Father Thomas, and in an under-tone, informed him of the escape of the men who had followed Keller to the door.

'It is well,' said the priest. I should have been sorry enough had blood stained the threshold of that good old man there; either his blood or the blood of others.'