ng it
over his brother's prostrate form, laving his face and hands, and
holding a small vessel to his parched and swollen lips so that the
draught could trickle into his mouth.

There was an effort to swallow, a quiver and a struggle, and the
wounded man opened his eyes and sat up.

"Where am I--what is it?" he gasped, draining the cup again and
again, like one who has been near to perish with thirst. "O
Humphrey, I have had such an awful dream!"

Humphrey had so placed his brother that he should not see on
opening his eyes that ghastly sight which turned the younger man
sick with horror each time his eyes wandered that way.

Charles saw the familiar outline of the forest, and his brother's
face bending over him. He had for a moment a vague impression of
something unspeakably awful and horrible, but at that moment he
believed that some mischance had befallen himself alone, and that
he had imagined some black, nameless horror in a fevered dream.

A shiver ran through Humphrey's frame. His blue eyes were dazed and
dilated. What answer could he make? He busied himself with dressing
the wounds upon his brother's chest and shoulders, from which the
blood still oozed slowly.

"What is it?" asked Charles once again; "how did I come to be
hurt?"

Humphrey made no reply, but a groan burst unawares from his lips.
The sound seemed to startle Charles from his momentary calm. He
suddenly put up his hand to his brow, felt the smart of the
significant red line left by the scalping knife, and the next
moment he had sprung to his feet with a sharp, low cry of
unspeakable anguish.

He faced round then--and looked!

Humphrey stood beside him shoulder to shoulder, with his arm about
his brother, lest physical weakness should again overpower him. But
Charles seemed like one turned to stone.

For perhaps three long minutes he stood thus--speechless,
motionless; then a wild cry burst from his lips, accompanied by a
torrent of the wildest, fiercest invective--appeals to Heaven for
vengeance, threats of undying hatred, undying hostility to those
savage murderers whose raid had made this fair spot into a
desolation so awful.

Humphrey stood still and silent the while, like one spellbound. He
scarcely knew his brother in this moment of passionate despair and
fury. Charles had been a silent, placable man all his life through.
Born and bred in the Quaker settlement, till he had taken to the
life of the forest he had been a man of q