rfeit the
valuable annual present, sent to them by their great Father of England,
an instalment of which was then due.

As the Diver was by no means popular in his adopted tribe, he was
promptly carried across the Niagara river, and forbidden ever to set
foot on its eastern shore again, under penalty of death. Having
performed this virtuous act, the Senecas moved eastward to the long
council-house of the Six Nations, which was located in the country of
the Onondagas, where they were to receive their presents and share in
the deliberations of their confederacy.

It was two months after the incidents above described, and several
weeks had passed without an Indian having been seen in the vicinity of
Tawtry House. So absolutely peaceful were its surroundings that the
vigilance of its inmates was relaxed, and during the daytime, at least,
they came and went at will, without a thought of insecurity.

This peace was rudely broken one morning by shrill cries from the
Scotch nurse maid who, an hour before, had strolled with her infant
charge toward the lake. She now ran to the house in an agony of
terror, and uttering unintelligible screams. It was at first believed
that the child was drowned, but finally the distracted parents gleaned
from the girl's half-coherent words that she had left him in safety at
some distance from the shore, for a single minute, while she stepped to
the water's edge for a drink. When she returned he had disappeared,
nor was there any answer to her calling.

For two days search parties scoured the surrounding forest, but without
avail. There was not an experienced trailer among them, Truman Flagg
being with Sir William Johnson at the Onondaga council-house. Toward
the close of the second day, while Major Hester and most of his men
were still engaged in their fruitless search, the heartbroken mother
walked listlessly to the place where her child had last been seen. She
had already been there many times, unconsciously, but irresistibly
attracted to the spot.

On this occasion, as she was about to turn back, there came to her ear
the cry of an infant. Like a tigress robbed of her young, and with
blazing eyes, the bereaved woman sprang in the direction of the sound,
and in another instant her child, alive and well, was clasped to her
bosom. He had been hidden beneath the low-spreading branches of a
small cedar, and she snatched him from a bark cradle, exquisitely made
and lined with costly f